Regarding the FlightXML2 search service

FlightAware AeroAPI
1

Hi,

I have some questions about the REST service flightxml.flightaware.com/json/FlightXML2/search that are not
covered by your documentation.

  1. We want to use “search” in our app in order to get
  • all flights currently in the air
  • all flights recently landed (e.g. in the last 3 hours)
  • this can be restricted to airlines (no general aviation)
    I tried the following queries:
    a) “-inAir 0 -filter airline” to get all landed flights
    b) “-inAir 1 -filter airline” to get all flights in air
    c) “-idents * -filter airline” to get them all
    In every case I have called setMaximumResultSize with “2000” and I have set the howMany parameter to “2000”.
    But: for a) and b) I never get more than 400 JSON records. But nextOffset is -1, which I think shall tell me the
    result is complete.
    How can I get the full result?

  1. regarding query a): after which time a record will disappear from the result because it is too old?

  2. why do I get in query c) nearly no arrived flights?

We use FlightAware to enhance data quality in a Cargo Tracking software. So it would be great if FlightXML2 could
distinguish cargo from person traffic … :slight_smile:

I am looking forward to your answer :slight_smile:

Wolfgang

2

The Search function wasn’t designed to return all of the inflight or on ground planes. You’d have to restrict your query to specific airports or possibly airlines (assuming that airline does not have more than 400 flights in the air) to get meaningful results.

The search function will only return results for airborne flights. To get flights that have arrived then the Arrived function would be a better choice, but again you’d have to specify an airport.

At this point we don’t have a direct way to get as big a data dump as you’re looking for so you’ll have to narrow your queries.

3

Ok, got it. Thanx.

Then I would like to use the flight number (your “idents” parameter) for an exact query.
Is it possible to give a list of flight numbers to the “idents” parameter (this is not documented)?
Reason: our application must use IATA flight numbers. And while there is at max. one IATA airline
code for an ICOA airline code, this is not the case vice versa. Given an IATA flight number,
there can be a few ICOA flight numbers I would like to query in one query. I.e. sth. like:

  • idents LYN1234,FLZ1234,FLA1234
    for IATA flight QH1234

Or is my only chance to say “-idents *1234”, eventually enhanced by the origin airport?

4

You can pass multiple idents into the Search query. To do that you need to enclose the idents inside curly brackets with each ident separated by a space. So for example this would return the info for three flights:

-idents {SWA986 SWA5 UAL1512}