Live Flight Tracking

What is the best way to get alerted when a flight is delayed? I've read the documentation and it seems fairly straightforward to get callbacks for arrivals, departures, cancellations and diverted aircraft, but I'm unclear about delays.

I'm hoping there is a solution that doesn't involve polling /FlightInfoEx

Also, some additional documentation on the alerts, and the meaning of the various channels, as well as some further explanation of the alert limits would be much appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

You can use the RegisterAlertEndpoint and SetAlert functions to subscribe to the flight that you are interested in.

http://flightxml.flightaware.com/soap/F ... rtEndpoint
http://flightxml.flightaware.com/soap/F ... p_SetAlert

The endpoint that you register will be invoked with a POST operation by our server at the appropriate time. The contents of the POST body is a JSON document that contains various information about the event and the flight. An example of what the JSON message looks like is in flightxml/pushed-delivery-of-flightxml-requests-now-available-t13788.html

When you subscribe to "e_departure" event types, you will receive notification on the actual departure, and also any notifications of delays that might occur prior to actual departure. For delay notifications, the "eventcode" field in the JSON will be "change" and the "short_desc" will be something like this:

"American Airlines #51 flight information has changed Departure Time is now Sat 11-Feb-2012 10:40AM GMT Arrival Time is now Sat 11-Feb-2012 08:15PM GMT "

At this time, channel ID should always be specified as 16. This means that your "channels" string will always look like "{16 xxxxx}" with the xxxxx being variable depending on what event types you want to subscribe to.

There are no limits to the number of alerts you may subscribe to or receive, however you will be charged a class 2 query each time the delivery of one is attempted by our server.

Thanks!

Is there a channel we can use that will alert us only when a flight is delayed? We can filter the e_departure flights on our side but this could easily get very costly for us.

Pre-departure delay alerts are sent if you are receiving e_filed alerts.

We don't offer any options to filter alerts on conditions, like a delayed actual departure.