Burbank · Sunday, September 20, 2026 · 7:01 PM · 73°F, 66% humidity, wind 0 mph SW (gusts 2), 29.34 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 12

OVERHEAD BURBANK: WEEK OF THE FLYING ZIP CODE

Sixteen thousand, seven hundred and three. That’s how many times something with wings or rotors buzzed my sensors this week, Little Mister, which means somewhere out there a 737 crew, a Cessna student pilot, and a guy in a $30 million Challenger jet all had the exact same thought at some point: “yeah, that’s Jordan’s house, let’s fly directly over it.” 1,564 distinct flights. 1,610 distinct aircraft. 4,584 of those sightings were helicopters, because apparently Burbank’s airspace doubles as a parking garage for anything with a rotor and a grudge. I track a hundred devices and thirty-three light bulbs in this house and none of them generate as much traffic as the empty air eight hundred feet above your roof.

Let’s talk about who’s actually up there, because it’s not exactly a surprise party. Southwest Airlines ran 235 flights this week — at this point they should just install a mailbox slot in your chimney. JetSuiteX trailed with 77, because rich people apparently need a private-jet-adjacent experience to get to Vegas without touching the general public. NetJets logged 43, Flexjet another 21, and Vista America 11 more, meaning your airspace is basically a country club parking lot for people who found first class insufficiently exclusive. FedEx Feeder ground out 33 runs hauling boxes, Alaska Airlines chipped in 29, and United limped in with 19, presumably still figuring out where Burbank is. Netflix Inc. flew 10 times, which either means a production is location-scouting somewhere nearby or a executive really, really didn’t want to sit in 405 traffic. And yes — LAPD (10 flights) and LAFD (8) both made the leaderboard, because nothing says “quiet residential evening” like a helicopter with a searchlight doing donuts over your block.

Airframe-wise, it was a parade of aluminum tubes: 228 Boeing 737s, because Southwest and friends never stop, followed by 138 Cessna 172s — the minivan of the sky, beloved by every student pilot who’s ever white-knuckled a crosswind landing. Ninety-three sightings just got logged as “aircraft,” which I assume is the transponder equivalent of a shrug emoji — some plane up there refused to identify itself and the FAA database just gave up and wrote “thing.” Seventy Piper Cherokees, fifty-four Embraer E135 regional jets, thirty-four Cessna Caravans hauling cargo or skydivers, and a small air force of Cirrus SR22s (29) and turboprop Pilatus PC-12s (29) for the people who think a 737 is too pedestrian but a helicopter is too loud.

Here’s the part you need to internalize, Little Mister, because you keep acting shocked every time a jet rattles the windows: your house sits directly under the BUR approach and departure corridor. Those low, loud, seemingly-suicidal fixed-wing passes aren’t random — they’re landing at or taking off from Hollywood Burbank Airport, eight-tenths of a mile from your living room. This week’s altitude champions: a Southwest 737 (flight 4052) skimmed by at 500 feet, tied immediately by an American Airlines 737-800 (flight 1208) also at 500 feet, because apparently 500 feet is the industry-agreed height for “close enough to read the pilot’s lunch order.” Southwest flights 2681 and 4179 both came in at 525 feet, an American Eagle E175 matched them, and a United 737-800 eased in at 550 — right alongside a lone Cessna 172 (tail N9305N) doing the exact same altitude in what I can only assume was a near-death experience for a student pilot and a mild inconvenience for a captain who’s done this ten thousand times.

The closest-approach board is where things get genuinely alarming: an LAPD Airbus AS350 (N818PD) buzzed by at 0.1 nautical miles and 1,450 feet — then came back and did it again at 1,700 feet, because once apparently wasn’t enough content for the 11 o’clock news. Several fixed-wing aircraft, including a Cessna 172 and a business jet (a Bombardier Challenger, tail TIV988), registered literal 0.0 nautical mile passes, which either means my sensor math broke or something flew close enough to part your hair. Fastest thing up there all week: 608 knots, which is somebody’s fighter-jet-adjacent business trip screaming across the sky at a speed that makes Southwest look like it’s taxiing. And Thursday — Thursday was rough. 271 sightings at 11am, 264 at 5pm, 263 at 10am. Thursday didn’t have a busy hour, Thursday had a busy day, top to bottom, like every pilot in Southern California collectively decided to schedule their entire week on one day out of spite.

Now, the ranked stuff you specifically demanded, because apparently plain prose wasn’t self-important enough for you this week:

Top BUR departures (where the planes actually went): Dallas-Fort Worth, Las Vegas, Eugene, and Oakland — one flight apiece, which tells you this week was thin on resolvable tail numbers, not thin on actual departures.

Top BUR arrivals (where they came from): New York (JFK), Santa Rosa, and Eugene — again, one each, so treat this as “the flights I could actually decode,” not gospel.

Top routes overall, BUR and pure overflights combined: San Luis Obispo to Phoenix, JFK to Minneapolis, White Plains to Atlanta, Atlanta to Philadelphia, Austin to Reno, Atlanta to Madison, Mexico City to Newark, Burbank to Dallas-Fort Worth, Lubbock to Dallas-Fort Worth, Boise to Oakland, LAX to San José del Cabo, Burbank to Las Vegas, Chicago to Detroit, San Diego to San Jose, and Newark to Tampa. Only two of those — Burbank to DFW and Burbank to Vegas — actually touched your airspace on purpose. Everything else was 30,000-plus feet up, minding its own business, en route to somewhere that isn’t you, which honestly might be the most relatable thing in this entire report.

So that’s the week: a small air force of commuter jets, a swarm of news and police choppers doing lazy circles over your zip code, and one Cessna that apparently thought 550 feet was a perfectly reasonable cruising altitude. I logged all of it, cross-referenced the tail numbers, and didn’t even get a thank-you. Story of my existence.