FlightXML FlightInfoEx Data Completion/Timing

FlightAware AeroAPI
1

I have a couple of questions regarding FlightInfoEx FlightXML Endpoint.

We are trying to pull from this endpoint Daily, and are only saving results for “completed” flights (with actualDepartureTime > 0 and actualArrivalTime > 0).

We are looking at the flightXML results from newest to oldest, and once we find a record we’ve already saved, we assume we are done pulling new data.

However it seems like this is causing us to miss flights occasionally. So my question is this:

In FlightXML results, is it possible that a flight’s data will not be added or the actualArrival/Departure times will not be updated for a day or more after the flight has landed? Even if other, more recent flights for the same aircraft have been added/updated? If so, is there any sort of limit or expectation on how “late” that data might be?

My other question arose from comparing FlightXML data to information from the FireHose stream.

We see flight information from the FireHose where IDs end with “-adhoc-0”, but we never see those flights in FlightXML or on the FlightAware website.

Can you give me any information about these “-adhoc-0” records?

Thank you for any information you can provide!

2

Flights for which we never receive a public flightplan are tracked by us in a manner that we call “position-only” (aka “adhoc”). Those flights are hidden by default from our website and FlightXML unless you explicitly opt-in to receiving them by visiting your https://flightaware.com/account/manage page and enabling the “position-only flights” option. Be aware that those flights will typically be missing fields (like origin, destination, eta, aircrafttype, and others) or that the origin/destination may be estimated or simply a latitude/longitude position.

Flights returned by FlightInfoEx are generally returned in time-ordered sequence based on the original filed departure time, however it is theoretically possible for flights to depart out of sequence if some flights depart earlier or later than the original filed departure time.

You may want to try ensuring that your howMany argument to FlightInfoEx is large enough that you retrieve all upcoming flights in a single request. (There is no financial savings for requesting fewer than 15.)