FlightXML3 looks like a pretty good update from an API perspective, so great work!
I’m a bit concerned about the query limits with the new pricing model though. I’m working on a consumer facing application for flight tracking and even a less-than-moderately-sized user base could hit > 600 queries per minute. For example, AirlineFlightSchedules isn’t returning any additional metadata compared to v2 except for the fa_ident. Therefore if I want to show a user all of the flights between two airports and include code shares + actual departure/arrival times I still have to make additional FlightInfoStatus calls for each flight, which can lead to dozens of API calls per user. Even with my own caching layer in between I’m not likely to get many hits due to variability in origins, destinations, and time ranges selected by users. With the lack of rate limiting in v2 this is a non-issue; the introduction of limiting queries with v3 is a huge concern of mine.
Are there any plans to cater toward use cases like this, or are consumer facing applications not really a priority?
Also, do you have thoughts on including all of the FlightInfoStatus metadata in the AirlineFlightSchedules response? It would be really helpful if you could and would definitely alleviate some query limit burden.
Thanks!
Don’t have an answer for you at the moment on the query limiting, but I’m passing the question along.
Regarding including FlightInfo for AirlineFlightSchedules that may be possible. I’ll add it as a request for the production version and will let you know if that is approved.
Awesome, thanks for the followup! Let me know if you I can provide you with any more info regarding my use cases.
Does that mean if approved it wouldn’t be added to the v3 API until launch? If so, doesn’t that extend to all API changes, i.e., there there no plans to make externally facing API changes during the beta period?
No sorry it could happen before the next launch. Internally we’re calling the next group of work the Production FlightXML3 epic so I used that same term. However any changes that we make during that phase will be included in the beta once they are through QA.
Ah okay, thanks for the clarification! I’ll anxiously await an update then
Hey @conej730 just following up on this, do you have anything to report regarding the v3 query limitations for consumer applications that I mentioned in my original post here? Also, has the addition of FlightInfo to the AirlineFlightSchedules response been approved?
No updated on that yet. We’re just beginning to tackle bugs and the additional methods. When I hear something I’ll let you know though.
Hi @conej730, just wanted to follow this up with you and see if there was any movement around the way that the rate request limits work. It would be really great if you could pass an array of flight aware identifiers into the FlightInfoStatus endpoint.
Reuben