Hello,
First time posting on here, I was just wondering if there is a way to get alerts on the flight’s status (e.g boarding, departed, cancelled) etc as they happen. For example when the flight is announced to be boarding, an alert would be sent to my app.
Thanks,
Kieran
Hi Kieran,
FlightAware does have an alert system. You can set up alerts online, see “My Alerts” menu for email addresses/twitter, but also through FlightXML, which is probably what you are looking for.
As you can see in the documentation,
SetAlert, GetAlerts, DeleteAlert and RegisterAlertEndpoint can be used to manage FlightXML flight alerts.
A good starting point is the documentation for SetAlert here:
https://flightxml.flightaware.com/soap/FlightXML2/doc#op_SetAlert
FlightXML can deliver the following types which you have to specify when creating the alert with SetAlert.
*filed
*departure
*arrival
*diverted
*cancelled
You should also receive
*change
*delay
alerts when that is the case, and you signed for departure/arrival.
Can you confirm if the e_filed status means the flight is “boarding”?
That is definitely NOT what it means.
“e_filed” means that the flight plan was submitted (filed) to the controlling authority, which is routinely done by the flight planning department of the airline a few hours before the planned departure time.
Thanks! What call would best track a flight being delayed? We have been testing alerts and we don’t see any alerts about a flight being delayed. What about boarding, is there a way to determine that a flight is boarding? Thanks!
Anyone have any ideas? We get delay alerts but the new departure and arrival times are not anywhere in the flight data. They only appear in a string of text so we’re wondering if we need to extract the data from that string of text?
The pushed alert includes the faFlightID, which you can use to cross-reference in a local database or trigger additional FlightXML requests to obtain any further information that you require.
However, in most cases the pushed alert will include enough information for you to know how to respond. For example, delayed flights will typically have a “estimatedarrivaltime” value that indicates a revised arrival time that will be later than the originally planned arrival time.
When a delay occurs we are most concerned with the estimated DEPARTURE time, where would we find that?
Estimated departure time is not currently available through FlightXML. However, you can approximate it by using estimatedarrivaltime and subtracting filed_ete from it.
Is that how the airports do it for their screens to notify passengers of their new departure times?
I am not privy to the implementation details of any proprietary airport terminal screens.
Times reflected on the airport departure screens are updated by each individual airline’s flight control department for posting revised expected “push back” departure times when different from scheduled.
Estimated “wheels in the well” departure times are passed to flight control by the pilots when a delay is expected to exceed planned taxi times plus a given amount of time set by the airline’s policy manual. (usually 15 minutes)
Note, that these two “departure times” will be different. Sometimes substantually so, particularly at airports like LGA and JFK.
The best source for updated information on a flight’s status is the particular airline’s web site or automated flight status information service which is usually accessed via their reservations phone number.
Sad news! It’s especially sad because the DELAY updates that FlightAware sends have nice text about the new departure time but the API does not provide that timestamp in any field. We could extract that information via regular expression but we are not confident the format will never change. Is that text from the airline itself? Could it vary by airline? Here is an example:
United / SkyWest #5160 flight information has changed
Departure Time is now Mon 16-May-2016 05:05PM PDT
Arrival Time is now Mon 16-May-2016 06:11PM PDT
Flight Status: Departure delayed about 1 hour 51 minutes
Departure:
San Francisco Intl (KSFO)
Mon 16-May-2016 05:05PM PDT
Gate 84A
Arrival:
Ontario Intl (KONT)
Mon 16-May-2016 06:11PM PDT
Terminal 2
The text in the body of alerts is generated by FlightAware and is only intended to be human readable, not necessarily machine parsable. Although the format of it generally does not change very often, we will do so when we make improvements to our service.
The alerts from FlightXML Push include the faFlightID of the triggering alert, which will allow you to make another FlightXML API request if you need to look up any details about that flight that are not readily available in the alert.