Why do planes fly over Korso and Kerava?

Korso, Rekola and Kerava sit under the extended centreline of runway 04R/22L, Helsinki-Vantaa's longest runway. Arrivals landing on 22L descend over them from the northeast, and departures in the 04 direction climb out the same way. Kerava's western edge sits inside Finavia's Lden 55 dB planning contour. Drop a pin on the map above to see the flight count for your exact street.

Which areas around Helsinki Airport are quietest?

Areas off the two main axes — the northeast-southwest parallel runways and the northwest arrival path — see far fewer overflights. Eastern Vantaa and Helsinki south of the 15/33 line benefit from the policy of avoiding jet operations toward the southeast, and most of central and eastern Helsinki is well clear of the corridors. The high-exposure ring is Ylästö, Pakkala, Kaivoksela, Korso and Kerava.

Which runway does Helsinki Airport use at night?

Outside peak hours — and especially at night — Finavia's preferential runway system puts arrivals on runway 15 (approaching from the northwest over Klaukkala and Nurmijärvi) and departures on 22R (climbing southwest over Kaivoksela toward Espoo). Finavia considers night use of runway 15 arrivals especially important for keeping people out of the noise contours.

Why does Tikkurila get less aircraft noise than Korso?

Tikkurila sits under the 15/33 crosswind runway's southeast axis, and jet landings from the southeast on 33 and jet take-offs toward the southeast off 15 are deliberately avoided because of the dense population under that heading. Korso, by contrast, is under the 04R/22L main runway axis, which runs all day. Tikkurila still hears traffic when strong northwest winds force the 15/33 axis into use, and it is flanked by 04R/22L flows.

When is Helsinki Airport busiest?

Traffic is banked around European and Asian transfer waves — pronounced departure peaks in the morning and mid-afternoon, and a heavy late-evening arrival peak around 22:00–23:00. That evening bank falls inside the night-weighted period of the Lden noise metric, so it dominates the official noise contours despite the airport being quieter after midnight.

How do I complain about aircraft noise in Vantaa or Helsinki?

Finavia handles noise feedback for Helsinki Airport and publishes a public flight and noise tracking service covering roughly 70 km around the airport, fed by nine permanent monitoring stations. Contact Finavia via finavia.fi (noise pages under Sustainability) or its switchboard on +358 20 708 000.

Does this map include all aircraft around Helsinki-Vantaa?

Effectively yes for what you'd hear — commercial jets at HEL carry ADS-B transponders, so the heatmap and route-density layers reflect real traffic. A small amount of light general-aviation traffic from nearby fields may be missing, but those aircraft are not the ones driving noise complaints under the main corridors.

Helsinki Flight Path Noise Map – Helsinki-Vantaa Airport (HEL)

Name: Aircraft noise observations near Helsinki-Vantaa Airport
Creator: Flight Path Noise
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Aircraft noise around Helsinki in October 2026

Loudest neighborhoods near Helsinki: Ylästö (Vantaa), Pakkala / Aviapolis (Vantaa), Korso (Vantaa), Kerava, Kaivoksela (Vantaa). Quietest: Nurmijärvi (kirkonkylä), Tapiola (Espoo). Busiest around 1 PM local time averaging 473 flights/day. Source: Flight Path Noise monitoring data, 30 days to 2026-10-19.

Flights by hour · last 30 days

12a6a12p6p

Average daily traffic

473

flights / day · 14,187 total

Busiest hour

1 PM

peak 95 dB

Loudest hour

1 PM

peak 95 dB

Loudest residential area

Ylästö (Vantaa)

69 dB avg · ~435 flights/day · Busy road

First community under the 22L/22R departure tracks; overflown at low altitude by the primary departure flow, day and night

Does Helsinki Airport have a curfew?

No — Helsinki-Vantaa is open 24 hours, with steep night noise charges instead of a curfew.

Helsinki-Vantaa nearly had one. Its 2011 environmental permit banned the noisiest jets (certified take-off noise above 89 EPNdB) and scheduled jet freighters during the 00:30–05:30 core night, with postal flights exempt — rules widely reported as taking effect in 2013. But in 2015 Finland’s Supreme Administrative Court annulled those conditions, ruling that operating restrictions belong exclusively to the national transport agency, and the agency then decided that no operating restrictions were needed — setting a noise-management target instead (the population inside the Lden 55 dB contour must not exceed 20,900). Today there is no ban on any aircraft type at night. The steering instruments are economic and procedural — noise charges on every jet arrival and departure between 23:00 and 06:00, priced significantly higher in the 00:30–05:30 core night, quota-count monitoring required by the 2021 environmental permit, and preferential night runways that put arrivals on runway 15 from the northwest and departures on 22R toward the southwest.

Helsinki-Vantaa (HEL/EFHK) is not curfewed, but it is carefully choreographed. Finland’s main hub — three runways in Vantaa, ~17 km north of central Helsinki, around 17 million passengers a year — runs 24 hours, and its night regime has an unusual legal history: hard overnight restrictions written into its 2011 environmental permit were struck down by the Supreme Administrative Court in 2015, leaving steep core-night noise charges and a deliberate runway ballet as the instruments that shape what residents hear. At night, arrivals are steered onto runway 15 from the northwest over Klaukkala, and departures onto 22R toward Espoo, while the southeast axis over Tikkurila is avoided. The 04R/22L diagonal sends a second corridor over Korso, Rekola and Kerava, and Finavia’s Asia-transfer banks stack a heavy arrival peak into the late evening — the hours that weigh most in the official noise contours.

Which neighborhoods are quietest — and which aren’t

Helsinki-Vantaa has three runways: parallel 04R/22L (3,500 m, the longest) and 04L/22R (3,060 m) on a northeast-southwest axis, plus the crosswind 15/33 (2,901 m) running northwest-southeast. Which corridor is loud at your address depends almost entirely on which of these axes you live under.

Area	Aircraft noise	Why
Ylästö	✈︎✈︎✈︎	First community under 22L/22R departure tracks
Pakkala / Aviapolis	✈︎✈︎✈︎	Immediately south of the field; ground noise plus low overflights
Korso	✈︎✈︎✈︎	Under the 04R/22L centreline; low arrivals and departures
Kerava	✈︎✈︎✈︎	On the 04R/22L axis; western edge inside the Lden 55 dB contour
Kaivoksela	✈︎✈︎✈︎	Directly under the 22R primary departure corridor, day and night
Tikkurila	✈︎✈︎	On the avoided 15/33 southeast axis; exposed in strong NW winds
Rekola	✈︎✈︎	Under the northeast approach path to 22L
Klaukkala	✈︎✈︎	Under the runway 15 arrival stream at moderate altitude
Malminkartano	✈︎✈︎	On the 22-direction departure track
Hyrylä	✈︎✈︎	Under northern turns and arrival feeds at higher altitude
Leppävaara	✈︎✈︎	Extended 22-direction departure corridor into Espoo
Nurmijärvi	✈︎	Wide NW arrival funnel; aircraft typically above 1,000 m
Tapiola	✈︎	Southwest of the departure fan; occasional climb-altitude traffic

The clearest pattern is the northeast-southwest diagonal: from Kerava through Korso and Rekola, across the airport, and out over Ylästö, Kaivoksela, Malminkartano and Leppävaara, this axis carries the bulk of jet traffic in both directions. The second pattern is the northwest funnel feeding runway 15 arrivals over Nurmijärvi and Klaukkala — the preferred and night-time landing direction. The notable absence is the southeast: jet landings on 33 from the southeast and jet take-offs from 15 toward the southeast are deliberately avoided because Tikkurila, eastern Vantaa and Helsinki proper sit under that heading. If you’re comparing addresses in Vantaa, Kerava, Tuusula, Nurmijärvi or northern Espoo, drop a pin on the map above to see the actual overflight count for the exact street.

Flight patterns and runway use

Finavia runs a noise-optimised preferential runway system outside peak hours: runway 15 for arrivals (approaching from the northwest) and runway 22R for departures (toward the southwest), with 22L added for departures during daytime peaks. In the busiest transfer waves, the parallel 04/22 runways switch to independent mixed operations for capacity, which spreads traffic across both northeast-southwest centrelines at once. Finavia considers keeping night arrivals on runway 15 especially important, because that approach path crosses comparatively sparsely populated terrain northwest of the airport.

The noise-abatement toolkit here is unusually deep. Continuous descent operations are written into the environmental permit as a target, and night-time compliance had reached roughly 85–90% by 2019 — meaning most late arrivals glide down at low thrust rather than stepping down with power changes. Departures off 22L use an NADP1 delayed-acceleration profile designed to reduce peak noise over Ylästö, Kaivoksela, Malminkartano and Leppävaara. Training flights and engine run-ups are restricted, and nine permanent noise monitoring stations feed Finavia’s public flight and noise tracking service.

What Helsinki-Vantaa does not have is any hard night restriction — and it nearly did. The 2011 environmental permit banned the noisiest jets (certified take-off noise above 89 EPNdB) and scheduled jet freighters during the 00:30–05:30 core night. Before those rules could take lasting effect, the Supreme Administrative Court annulled them in 2015, finding that operating restrictions are the transport agency’s call, not the environmental permit’s — and the agency chose a noise-management target over any ban. The result is today’s system: charges, procedures and runway choice instead of prohibition. On the map above, the route-density layer makes the geometry obvious — twin bright diagonals northeast and southwest, a northwest arrival fan, and a conspicuously dim southeast quadrant.

When is it quietest?

Helsinki-Vantaa’s noise rhythm follows its role as a Europe-to-Asia transfer hub, with traffic arranged in banks:

Early morning (~05:30–07:00): the day spins up with the first departure bank; core-night charges lapse at 05:30.
Morning departure peak (07:00–09:00): heaviest sustained activity on the departure corridors over Ylästö and Kaivoksela.
Midday (10:00–14:00): moderate, with a mid-afternoon transfer bank building from ~14:00.
Late evening arrival peak (22:00–23:00): a distinctive HEL feature — long-haul and European arrivals stack into the last hours before midnight. Because the Lden noise metric weights evening and night traffic more heavily, this bank dominates the official contours.
Core night (00:30–05:30): the quietest window. There is no ban, but noise charges are significantly higher than in the 23:00–06:00 shoulder hours, so movements thin out to cargo, mail and stragglers — routed onto runway 15 arrivals and 22R departures when wind allows.

Wind is the wildcard. A strong northwest wind can force the 15/33 axis into full use, putting Tikkurila and eastern Vantaa under traffic they normally escape; a switch to 04-direction operations sends departures northeast over Korso and Kerava instead of southwest. The hourly profile in the pin-drop report above shows how these patterns land on your specific address.

How to check noise at your specific address

The map above answers “is this street loud?” in three steps:

Search your address or postcode in the bar at the bottom of the map.
Drop a pin — click the location marker that appears.
Read the noise report in the sidebar: average daily noise (Leq), peak observed dB, flights per day passing within 2 km, and an hourly breakdown.

The Noise Heatmap layer (orange/red = louder) and the Route Density layer (purple/magenta = busier corridors) make Helsinki-Vantaa’s geometry legible at a glance: the long northeast-southwest diagonals, the northwest arrival funnel, and the quiet southeast quadrant. Most addresses in central Helsinki, eastern Vantaa and southern Espoo land in the green zone; the ring to watch is Ylästö, Pakkala, Kaivoksela, Korso and Kerava. If you’re weighing a move within that ring, check the hourly breakdown — the late-evening arrival bank matters more for sleep than the daily average suggests.

Frequently asked questions

Why do planes fly over Korso and Kerava?: Korso, Rekola and Kerava sit under the extended centreline of runway 04R/22L, Helsinki-Vantaa's longest runway. Arrivals landing on 22L descend over them from the northeast, and departures in the 04 direction climb out the same way. Kerava's western edge sits inside Finavia's Lden 55 dB planning contour. Drop a pin on the map above to see the flight count for your exact street.
Which areas around Helsinki Airport are quietest?: Areas off the two main axes — the northeast-southwest parallel runways and the northwest arrival path — see far fewer overflights. Eastern Vantaa and Helsinki south of the 15/33 line benefit from the policy of avoiding jet operations toward the southeast, and most of central and eastern Helsinki is well clear of the corridors. The high-exposure ring is Ylästö, Pakkala, Kaivoksela, Korso and Kerava.
Are there flights at Helsinki Airport at night?: Yes — the airport is open 24 hours with no operating restrictions, so overnight cargo, mail and late long-haul arrivals do fly. Noise charges apply to every jet movement between 23:00 and 06:00, priced significantly higher in the 00:30–05:30 core night, which keeps voluntary night traffic thin. At night, arrivals are steered onto runway 15 from the northwest and departures onto 22R toward the southwest whenever winds allow.
Which runway does Helsinki Airport use at night?: Outside peak hours — and especially at night — Finavia's preferential runway system puts arrivals on runway 15 (approaching from the northwest over Klaukkala and Nurmijärvi) and departures on 22R (climbing southwest over Kaivoksela toward Espoo). Finavia considers night use of runway 15 arrivals especially important for keeping people out of the noise contours.
Why does Tikkurila get less aircraft noise than Korso?: Tikkurila sits under the 15/33 crosswind runway's southeast axis, and jet landings from the southeast on 33 and jet take-offs toward the southeast off 15 are deliberately avoided because of the dense population under that heading. Korso, by contrast, is under the 04R/22L main runway axis, which runs all day. Tikkurila still hears traffic when strong northwest winds force the 15/33 axis into use, and it is flanked by 04R/22L flows.
When is Helsinki Airport busiest?: Traffic is banked around European and Asian transfer waves — pronounced departure peaks in the morning and mid-afternoon, and a heavy late-evening arrival peak around 22:00–23:00. That evening bank falls inside the night-weighted period of the Lden noise metric, so it dominates the official noise contours despite the airport being quieter after midnight.
How do I complain about aircraft noise in Vantaa or Helsinki?: Finavia handles noise feedback for Helsinki Airport and publishes a public flight and noise tracking service covering roughly 70 km around the airport, fed by nine permanent monitoring stations. Contact Finavia via finavia.fi (noise pages under Sustainability) or its switchboard on +358 20 708 000.
Does this map include all aircraft around Helsinki-Vantaa?: Effectively yes for what you'd hear — commercial jets at HEL carry ADS-B transponders, so the heatmap and route-density layers reflect real traffic. A small amount of light general-aviation traffic from nearby fields may be missing, but those aircraft are not the ones driving noise complaints under the main corridors.

Sources and further reading

Controlling aircraft noise — Helsinki Airport — Finavia
Aircraft Noise Management at Helsinki Airport — UC Davis Aviation Noise & Emissions Symposium 2020
New overnight noise restrictions for Helsinki-Vantaa Airport (2011 permit, later annulled) — Yle News
Helsinki Airport — Wikipedia
Helsinki-Vantaa — Airport Noise Regulation Information — Boeing

Data updated 2026-10-19 — live ADS-B monitoring, rolling 30-day statistics (methodology). Article text revised 2026-07-17.

30 dB	Whisper
45 dB	Quiet residential
55 dB	Normal conversation
65 dB	Busy road
75 dB	Vacuum cleaner
85 dB	Heavy traffic
95 dB	Motorcycle nearby

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Helsinki Flight Path Noise Map – Helsinki-Vantaa Airport (HEL)

Aircraft noise around Helsinki in October 2026

Does Helsinki Airport have a curfew?

Which neighborhoods are quietest — and which aren’t

Flight patterns and runway use

When is it quietest?

How to check noise at your specific address

Frequently asked questions

Sources and further reading

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