Heathrow from Satellite View - Airport

Heathrow

✈️ Airports Easy Level (Zoom 12)

📍 Coordinates 51.4700, -0.4543

💡 Official Game Hint "Europe's busiest airport"

👇 Can you identify this location?

"Europe's busiest airport"

About Heathrow

Heathrow Airport is a major international airport in London, England. It is the main hub for British Airways and Virgin Atlantic. Located 14 miles (23 km) west of Central London, it serves as the primary gateway to the United Kingdom and is one of the world's busiest international airports.

Heathrow operates with two parallel runways running east-west, which limits its capacity compared to other major hubs. A third runway has been a subject of intense political debate for decades. The airport has four operational terminals (2, 3, 4, and 5). Terminal 5, opened in 2008, serves as the exclusive home for British Airways.

The airport handles a high volume of premium long-haul traffic. It is linked to London by the Heathrow Express and the Elizabeth Line. Heathrow is known for its high-end shopping and lounges, catering to the luxury market. Its constrained capacity makes its slots some of the most expensive and coveted assets in aviation.

Heathrow Airport Holdings, the airport's parent company, is majority owned by a Spanish–Canadian consortium led by Ferrovial (25 per cent) alongside Qatar Investment Authority (20 per cent), Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (12.6 per cent) and China Investment Corporation (10 per cent), with smaller stakes held by Singapore's GIC and the Universities Superannuation Scheme. The airport's postal designation is technically the London Borough of Hillingdon, not the City of Westminster. Its unusual Terminal 5 planning inquiry, launched in 1995 and concluded only in 2001, remains the longest public planning inquiry in British history at 525 sitting days and generated 6,850 pages of written evidence—a paper trail that filled 43 filing cabinets and inspired legislative reform of the planning process for major infrastructure projects.

Play Airports Quiz 🗺️ Google Maps 📘 Airports Guide

🛰️ Satellite Identification Tips

At zoom 12, Heathrow's two parallel east–west runways are the defining feature, with the massive terminal complex sandwiched between them. Terminal 5's large rectangular footprint sits at the western end, while the older Terminals 2 and 3 cluster around the central area. The M25 motorway curves around the western perimeter, and the distinctive reservoirs (Queen Mother and King George VI) with their geometric shapes sit just to the south. Dense London suburbs press against all boundaries. The M4 motorway runs along the northern edge, and the characteristic spur road leading into the tunnel entrance for Terminal 5 is visible.

Additional features fine-tune the identification. The Sipson village, whose demolition was fought off by residents during the abandoned 2010 third-runway plan, sits directly north between the current parallel runways and shows as a small residential enclave inside airport lands. The Perry Oaks reservoir just south of Terminal 5 was drained and filled in during the T5 construction, transforming from a distinctive rectangular blue basin visible on pre-2003 imagery into a taxi-way apron. The Great Southwest Road (A30) skirts the northern boundary as a distinctive four-lane divided ribbon. Windsor Castle's Round Tower is visible 8 kilometres to the west when the sun's angle catches its Portland stone facades. The heavily trafficked M4 spur into the central terminal complex loops through a T-shaped tunnel whose entry portals are recognisable at zoom 15.

📊 Quick Facts

IATA Code LHR

Passengers/Year ~80 million

Runways 2

Opened 1946

Hub For British Airways, Virgin Atlantic

ICAO Code EGLL

Terminal area 1,227 hectares

Airlines served ~90 airlines

🌍 Did You Know?

Heathrow is the busiest airport in Europe and the seventh busiest in the world, handling over 80 million passengers annually.
Terminal 5 is exclusively used by British Airways and was the most expensive standalone building in the UK when completed in 2008, costing £4.3 billion.
The airport operates under a strict cap of 480,000 aircraft movements per year, making landing slots at Heathrow among the most valuable in the world.
Heathrow has the most international passenger traffic of any airport worldwide—more than any US, Asian, or Middle Eastern hub.
Heathrow was originally a small aerodrome called "Heath Row" for the string of cottages that lined the edge of Hounslow Heath; the site was requisitioned by the Air Ministry on 1 January 1944 under wartime emergency powers for use as a Royal Air Force base to launch bombing raids against Japanese-occupied Malaya, but the war ended before any operations began and the site opened to civilian traffic on 25 March 1946
The airport's 68-hectare cargo village handles roughly 1.7 million tonnes of freight per year and specialises in high-value perishables: 90 per cent of the Kenyan cut-rose exports arriving in Britain pass through Terminal 4's Animal Reception Centre within 8 hours of leaving Nairobi, and a dedicated Rolls-Royce engine facility handles maintenance parts weighing up to 6.5 tonnes each
Heathrow's Terminal 5 building, when it opened in March 2008, suffered such a catastrophic baggage-handling meltdown on day one that British Airways cancelled 34 flights and 23,000 bags were left stranded; the failure was traced to insufficient staff car-park capacity that had prevented baggage handlers reaching their posts on time, and the resulting parliamentary inquiry led to the resignation of BA's chief operating officer

Heathrow

About Heathrow

🛰️ Satellite Identification Tips

📊 Quick Facts

🌍 Did You Know?

✈️ More Airports to Explore