Flight Report

These statistics cover London Heathrow Airport (LHR/EGLL) on 31 March 2026, the 80th anniversary of its opening as a civil airport. ADS-B radar captured 1,258 total movements across the day: 625 arrivals, 627 departures, and 6 touch-and-goes involving 492 unique aircraft. Traffic was nearly continuous, with the first recorded flight at 01:00 BST and the last at 23:59. The day's peak came at 16:00 with 85 flights in a single hour, against an average of 52.4 flights per hour. Early morning hours saw arrivals dominate, with no departures recorded before 06:00. By the late evening the pattern reversed, with arrivals dropping sharply after 22:00 while departures continued into midnight. The busiest routes by total movements were Dublin (34), Amsterdam (33), Madrid (26), and Frankfurt (26). Glasgow and Edinburgh each recorded around 21 to 22 combined movements, placing them among the top ten alongside Geneva, Rome, and Lisbon. Approach and departure tracks were distributed across all compass quadrants, with ESE, E, and WNW directions accounting for the largest shares in both categories. Aircraft registered in the United Kingdom made up the largest portion of the fleet at 229, followed by the United States at 61 and Germany at 27. In total, aircraft from over 40 countries appeared in the data. The altitude distribution shows strong concentrations at the surface through 1,000 feet (95,158 ADS-B position points) and again between 34,000 and 39,000 feet, with the 37,000 to 38,000 foot band the most populated at 64,668 points. The highest recorded altitude was 43,750 feet, achieved by a US-registered aircraft with tail number N1620 on a departure of 550.7 nautical miles. The longest flight by distance was a 2,148.9 nautical mile departure to Saint Catherine International Airport (SKV), lasting 277.9 minutes. The shortest was a 41.1-minute arrival from London Stansted covering 65.6 nautical miles. Across all 1,258 flights, total distance accumulated to 866,725.8 nautical miles from 1,057,292 recorded ADS-B position points.