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Heathrow airport is one of the busiest airports in the world, one would assume most traffic there is reserved for commercial airliners because they carry a much larger number of passengers.

How many private jets land at Heathrow airport per day?

  • On a normal work day
  • On weekends.
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  • $\begingroup$ Related: Are private jets allowed to land at London Heathrow? Heathrow is transparent in disclosing traffic movements, but apart from unscheduled movements in the noise-sensitive hours, there isn't public data on the aircraft types involved. $\endgroup$
    – user14897
    Commented Feb 3, 2019 at 19:29
  • $\begingroup$ "one would assume most traffic there is reserved for commercial airliners" Citation needed for the implicit claim that airports optimize for a high number of passengers. $\endgroup$
    – user
    Commented Feb 3, 2019 at 19:32
  • $\begingroup$ I don't know, but it isn't many. In all the times I've flown to and from there (as a passenger) I think I've seen 1. That's because it's an expensive airport to fly into and as you say it is busy, plus there are many very good alternatives like Biggin Hill, Farnborough, Wickam Air Park, London City, etc. $\endgroup$
    – GdD
    Commented Feb 4, 2019 at 8:21

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How many private jets land at Heathrow airport per day?

None!

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January 2018 movements, source: CAA

Related: Where does an A-lister land when they waft in from paradise? Yes, Luton

To try to explain why this absence of business planes at a large airport, its important to understand that private aviation in Americas and in Europe are not seen the same way.

In Americas private planes are very common, this is not the case in Europe, where you must be lucky to know someone in your neighboring who is a pilot. As a consequence airliners and other planes have separate lives with different fees paid.

For example, I live in Paris: Business planes use Le Bourget aerodrome (the one which hosts the Paris Air Show -- btw nobody here knows what is the Paris Air Show, as everyone calls it Le Salon du Bourget since it exists... --, while airliners use CDG or Orly airports (and now the remote/low cost Beauvais). This is the same in UK.

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  • $\begingroup$ Note that in Dec '18, EGLL saw 5 air taxi and 20 private movements, but like I commented earlier, the a/c types involved are not made public, but out of the 25 there could be private (in the colloquial sense) jets. Still it's negligible compared to the rest, of course. $\endgroup$
    – user14897
    Commented Feb 5, 2019 at 21:17
  • $\begingroup$ It's not that different in the US. Major airports here don't exactly welcome GA flights either, especially when there are smaller airports all around them that are more convenient, less congested and less expensive. They just can't completely ban GA like in Europe because that's against the law here. $\endgroup$
    – StephenS
    Commented Feb 6, 2019 at 3:22
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    $\begingroup$ @StephenS: It's not forbidden for a private-use aircraft with appropriate equipment to land at CDG or Orly either, but it's expensive and the time waiting before take off is ridiculous (not mentioning the border control time). For landing, there is a condition: The airspeed must be maintained above 200 kt until 4 NM of the threshold, which means for a small aircraft, an additional workload at the last minute to switch from the clean configuration to the landing configuration. $\endgroup$
    – mins
    Commented Feb 6, 2019 at 9:58
  • $\begingroup$ Thank you for the answer $\endgroup$
    – securitydude5
    Commented Feb 10, 2019 at 11:54

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