Burbank · Monday, October 19, 2026 · 11:21 AM · 83°F, 30% humidity, wind 1 mph SSW (gusts 2), 29.39 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 4
Overhead Burbank: Seven Days, 11,432 Sightings, and Almost No Paperwork
Little Mister, the sky over the house logged 11,432 sightings this week. That’s 1,237 distinct flights and 1,261 distinct airframes. I’m not sure how the airframe count beat the flight count, and I’m not going to debug it on a Monday. About 3,600 of those sightings were helicopters, which means nearly a third of everything over your roof was a rotor-wing machine hovering around like it pays property tax. The closest pass came in at 0.0 nautical miles, which is the polite way of saying “directly on top of you.” The highest hit 9,975 ft and the fastest hit 353 knots, about 406 mph. The sky is busy, loud, and indifferent to your nap schedule.
Let’s talk about who’s flying. Southwest Airlines logged 227 flights, which is more than the next five operators combined and roughly the aviation equivalent of a golden retriever: everywhere, enthusiastic, and always landing. The Boeing 737 is the top type at 224, so the math checks out. JetSuiteX came second with 59, then Alaska with 36 and FedEx Feeder with 33. NetJets managed 28 and Flexjet 19, so the rich are commuting again, and I’m sure they’re worth every penny of that fractional ownership. United mainline had 19 and United Express 13. Private operators logged 18, Ameriflight 12, and Delta Connection 11. Netflix Inc. showed up with 9 flights, which means somebody’s streaming empire is physically flying around because the cloud wasn’t enough. Delta mainline had 8, and the Los Angeles Fire Department had 7 for reasons I hope were boring.
On types, after the 737, the Cessna 172 is the flying-school workhorse at 84, followed by the Piper PA-28 at 53. Then come the Embraer E135 at 50, the E175 at 47, and the ERJ-145 at 26, plus Cessna Caravans at 38 and PC-12s at 25. A pile of sightings (48) came in as plain “aircraft,” because the database shrugged. The helicopter lineup is the Airbus AS350 at 28, plus assorted others.
Now the framing, because it matters. You live under the BUR corridor. Everything down in the weeds is landing at or taking off from Hollywood Burbank Airport, not “flying over.” The lowest fixed-wing passes this week were Alaska 1388 (a 737-800) at 500 ft, a PC-12 (N825PR) also at 500 ft, and a mystery aircraft at 500 ft that declined to identify itself. Then came a Southwest conga line (SWA384, SWA1557, SWA2255, SWA4311) at 525 ft each, plus a Beech Bonanza (N800EE) also at 525 ft. Five hundred feet is not “overflight.” That’s a 737 with its landing gear out, your roof in its windshield, and you pretending the rattling windows are ambient.
The closest passes had a theme: helicopters, naturally. N818PD, an AS350, got to 0.0 nm at 1,900 ft and again at 0.1 nm at only 1,175 ft. LAPD’s N267LA, another AS350, hit 0.1 nm at 1,025 ft. City of Burbank PD’s MD52 (N103CG) went by at 0.1 nm and 1,750 ft. A Cessna 172 (N737QF) logged a 0.0 nm pass at 4,400 ft, which is the most rebellious tail number I’ve ever seen on a Cessna. EJA495, a NetJets callsign, did the same at 4,875 ft. A P06T (N940TA) crossed at 0.1 nm and 8,400 ft, probably a Tecnam doing its best to look dignified.
The orbiters deserve their own paragraph, because they live here now. The “Private” category logged 912 sightings across 16 different tails. That’s a lot of rich people or news crews trying to find something interesting in the San Fernando Valley. The Los Angeles Police Department logged 817 sightings across 10 tails. The City of Burbank Police Department, with exactly one helicopter, logged 362, which is a single machine working a double shift and, I assume, resentful about it. Helinet Aviation Services came in at 225 across 7 tails, Helicopters Inc at 109, Dynamic Avlease at 85, LA County Sheriff’s at 78, Orbic Air at 63, LADWP at 60, and English Air Service at 48. LADWP’s chopper is presumably checking that the power lines still exist. Psalm 139:9 says “If I take the wings of the morning.” Nobody told the Burbank PD one-tail wonder it came with a 362-sighting quota.
The busiest hours were Wednesday at 4 p.m. with 247 sightings, then Tuesday at 8 p.m. with 223, Tuesday at 5 p.m. with 207, Wednesday at 3 p.m. with 204, and Tuesday at 10 a.m. and Thursday at 1 p.m. tied at 201. So the sky peaks on weekday afternoons, when you’re presumably trying to take a call. Tuesday at 8 p.m. is the real insult, because that’s after-dinner, TV-on, can’t-hear-anything o’clock.
Now the part where I have to be honest, which I hate. You asked for ranked destinations and routes, and the route resolver only managed about 15 routes out of 1,237 flights. That’s roughly 1 percent. I’m not inventing the other 99 percent, so here’s what the data actually supports.
Top destinations departing BUR, ranked:
- Oakland (OAK), 2 flights
- Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW), 1 flight
- Reno (RNO), 1 flight
Top origins arriving into BUR, ranked:
- Eugene (EUG), 1 flight
- New York (JFK), 1 flight
- Santa Rosa (STS), 1 flight
- Concord (CCR), 1 flight
Those are all ties at the bottom, so treat the “ranking” as alphabetical in spirit. One caveat: JFK and STS also show up in the route table as high-altitude transits (JFK to Nashville, Santa Rosa to Seattle), so I don’t fully trust them as BUR arrivals. Only Eugene to Burbank is cleanly backed by a full route. The rest I’m calling resolver noise until proven otherwise.
Top overall routes, in order: Visalia to Oakland (2) and Burbank to Oakland (2) are tied at the top, and then a long tail of singles. The Visalia to Oakland pair is not BUR traffic, just a couple of passes overhead. Burbank to Oakland, twice, is the only route this week that I’d call a pattern. Burbank to Dallas-Fort Worth rounds out the confirmed BUR departures, and Eugene to Burbank is the lone confirmed arrival.
The high-altitude transiting traffic is the genuinely-just-passing-over crowd: Phoenix to El Paso, White Plains to Atlanta, JFK to Nashville, Atlanta to Philadelphia, Kansas City to Phoenix, Atlanta to Dallas-Fort Worth, Willemstad (Curaçao) to Atlanta, Washington Dulles to Newark, Kansas City to Orlando, and Santa Rosa to Seattle. Nobody in that list is landing here, and half of them seem to be trying to get to Atlanta, which is the only airport that can’t stop itself. Curaçao to Atlanta passing over Burbank is also geographically bizarre, so either somebody took a long way around or the transponder data is having a stroke.
Net verdict, Little Mister: the sky is loud, the helicopters are relentless, Southwest is a fixture, and my route data is a sieve. Fix the resolver or accept that the house is just a very expensive seat in the stalls at the world’s noisiest airshow.