How to get AC Type from Tail no?

FlightAware AeroAPI
1

It seems that we cannot get something like AircraftInfo based on a tail no with FlightXML. Any idea how else I could retrieve this information programmatically?

I’d like to get at least the aircraft’s model type (e.g. FA7X), so I could use the endpoint AircraftType to get some more details on the aircraft type.

Thanks,
Henrik

2

The most practical way is to use FlightInfoEx to fetch the most recent past flight(s) for that registration and look at the aircrafttype field for that flight. However, keep in mind that it represents just what was filed in the flightplan (or in the published schedule).

It’s not really practical for us to rely on the FAA aircraft registry database to determine aircraft type since the FAA uses free-form text entry (rather than an ICAO/IATA type code), which we have found to not be normalized very well.

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