Category: Where do aircraft fly

Information on aircraft arriving at or departing from London Gatwick is provided by WebTrak, our online flight tracker, which provides the aircraft flight number, aircraft type, height and if the flight infringed our noise abatement procedures (e.g. CDO). We also show aircraft which do not operate to or from London Gatwick. You can also see the departure Noise Preferential Routes (NPR), rainfall (to show why aircraft may be avoiding certain large storms), a 15NM distance scale (to assess where arriving aircraft join the final approach), as well as the data direct from our fleet of field noise monitors.

WebTrak uses data taken directly from Air Traffic Control radar, which is then fed into the airport’s Noise and Track Keeping (NTK) system which powers the flight tracking systems. A short delay is applied to the replay of ‘live’ data of 25 minutes to ensure all flight track data is presented as accurately as possible. Alternatively, you can use the other pages in this section to understand how aircraft overfly your local area, typically how many, at what height and how frequently aircraft overflew your area.

Flight paths to and from London Gatwick may vary due to factors such as wind and weather, time of day and the amount of traffic arriving or departing the airport. This is especially true for arrivals, which do not follow any standardised routes on their way to the final approach. However, departures will vector onto a more direct heading once they reach the required altitude of the Noise Preferential Route (NPR).

The following tool provides an overview of all flights that arrived at and departed from London Gatwick during a full month below 7,000 ft. The charts are shown for both an easterly and westerly operational direction with recent months shown along with comparative charts each year back to 2013. You can select the chart using the drop down menu in the top right hand corner of the display.

The data is shown as a density plot which counts the number of movements (arrivals and/or departures) that flew over a grid with colour showing which grid cells, receive:

• Blue: on average between 1 and 5 movements per hour
• Green: on average between 5 and 10 movements per hour
• Yellow: on average between 10 and 20 movements per hour
• Orange: on average between 20 and 30 movements per hour
• Red: on average between 30 and 40 movements per hour

Despite the variations in traffic and flight paths, looking at the aircraft tracks on a typical day of operations can be a useful way to examine the usual patterns at London Gatwick. Whilst the previous section detailed the areas which experienced overflight by providing density maps with monthly data, the animations below show complete tracks on single days:

You can also use our WebTrak to look at the routes into and out of London Gatwick.

Much like the lateral tracks, aircraft altitudes in the vicinity of London Gatwick may vary. This is to ensure safe separation between arrivals and departures and can also result from different aircraft types and varying weather conditions. Nevertheless, most flights will use similar altitude bands during either arrival or departure.

The following animations show how the typical altitudes of aircraft on these flight paths into and out of London Gatwick operate. If you hover your mouse over the various areas, additional information will appear to note the typical altitude of aircraft in that altitude band. Where traffic streams cross, the lower altitude band will be displayed.