Request clarity on SearchBirdseyeInFlight API

FlightAware AeroAPI
1

Dear Team,

We tried to find flight status of two flights which are airborne(en-route) on MONDAY 07-AUG-2017.

  1. FLIGHT : EK 1 MONDAY 07-AUG-2017
  2. FLIGHT : EK 404 MONDAY 07-AUG-2017

We invoked SearchBirdseyeInFlight API using the key provided by you and got the results in JSON format

We found few discrepancies as compared to our expected output, details of the issues are mentioned below:

A. FLIGHT : EK 1 MONDAY 07-AUG-2017

Below are the steps followed and found issues, we request your team to address below issues as early as possible:

We invoked SearchBirdseyeInFlight API using below URL to get the result in JSON format

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx … ght?query={ident_or_reg%20{UAE5}}&howMany=20&offset=0
{
“SearchBirdseyeInFlightResult”:{
“next_offset”:-1,
“aircraft”:
{
“faFlightID”:“UAE1-1501818300-schedule-0000:0”,
“ident”:“UAE1”,
“prefix”:“”,
“type”:“A388”,
“suffix”:“”,
“origin”:“OMDB”,
“destination”:“EGLL”,
“timeout”:“0”,
“timestamp”:1502018527,
“departureTime”:1501992840,
“firstPositionTime”:1501992957,
“arrivalTime”:1502018647,
“longitude”:-0.38638,
“latitude”:51.46504,
“lowLongitude”:-0.38638,
“lowLatitude”:25.20338,
“highLongitude”:55.79635,
“highLatitude”:51.82416,
“groundspeed”:397,
“altitude”:4,
“heading”:271,
“altitudeStatus”:“-”,
“updateType”:“A”,
“altitudeChange”:“”,
“waypoints”:“”
}
]
}
}
Below are the Issues:

  1. We converted “departureTime”:1501992840 and got below result

1501992840 converts to Sunday August 06, 2017 08:14:00 (am) in time zone Asia/Dubai (GST)

Which is NOT MATCHING with Flightaware TIME shown on the site 08:02AM +04

  1. We converted “arrivalTime”:1502018647 and got below result

502108486 converts to Monday August 07, 2017 13:21:26 (pm) in time zone Europe/London (BST)

Which is NOT MATCHING with Flightaware DATE and TIME shown on the site MONDAY 07-AUG-201712:23PM BST

  1. In SearchBirdseyeInFlight result we expected arrivalTimeEstimated, but this element is not present.

B. FLIGHT : EK 404 MONDAY 07-AUG-2017

We tried to find a flight status EK 404 of which is airborne MONDAY 07-AUG-2017 09:34AM +04

Below are the steps followed and found issues, we request your team to address below issues as early as possible:

We invoked SearchBirdseyeInFlight API using below URL to get the result in JSON format

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx … ght?query={ident_or_reg%20{UAE404}}&howMany=20&offset=0
{
“SearchBirdseyeInFlightResult”:{
“next_offset”:-1,
“aircraft”:
{
“faFlightID”:“UAE404-1501824420-airline-0015”,
“ident”:“UAE404”,
“prefix”:“H”,
“type”:“A388”,
“suffix”:“”,
“origin”:“WSSS”,
“destination”:“YMML”,
“timeout”:“0”,
“timestamp”:1502058183,
“departureTime”:1502033280,
“firstPositionTime”:1502033421,
“arrivalTime”:1502058180,
“longitude”:144.84488,
“latitude”:-37.70694,
“lowLongitude”:103.96516,
“lowLatitude”:-37.84259,
“highLongitude”:144.86275,
“highLatitude”:1.32372,
“groundspeed”:489,
“altitude”:11,
“heading”:353,
“altitudeStatus”:“-”,
“updateType”:“A”,
“altitudeChange”:“”,
“waypoints”:“”
}
]
}
}
Below are the Issues:

  1. We converted departureTime":1502033280 and got below result

1502033280 converts to Sunday August 06, 2017 19:28:00 (pm) in time zone Asia/Dubai (GST)

Which is NOT MATCHING with Flightaware DATE and TIME shown on the site MONDAY 07-AUG-201709:34AM +04

  1. We converted “arrivalTime”:1502058180 and got below result

1502058180 converts to Monday August 07, 2017 06:23:00 (am) in time zone Asia/Singapore (SGT)

Which is NOT MATCHING with Flightaware DATE and TIME shown on the site MONDAY 07-AUG-201709:06PM +08

Kindly request you to review and provide detailed information on the result/output given by SearchBirdseyeInFlight API.

Regards,
RizOne4u

2

For departure and arrival times of SearchBirdseyeInFlight, you need to compare them with the takeoff and landing times on the website, not the gate departure and arrival times. Currently SearchBirdseyeInFlight does not present the gate times, only takeoff and landing times. So in your first example (UAE1), on the website the takeoff time is 8:14am UAE time and landing time is 12:24pm BST. The arrivalTime from the birdseye result is 1502018647 which is 12:24pm BST.

arrivalTimeEstimated is not a field returned by SearchBirdseyeInFlight. If you need the estimated arrival time you’d have to look at something like FlightInofEx.

Same regarding departureTime is actual takeoff time and arrivalTime is actual landing time for your second example.

3

Dear Team,

Thanks for the detailed clarification.

I request you to look into second case mentioned below. In this case, takeoff(epoch time) and Gate time has a DAY difference.

if i put it in your words: How Take off Time can be ahead of Departure Gate time for the same flight ?

→ Take off on(based on epoch time) : **Sunday August 06, 2017 19:28:00 (pm) **in time zone Asia/Dubai (GST)

→ Departure Gate time : MONDAY 07-AUG-201709:34AM +04

Please let me know if am missing something.

Regards,
RizOne4u

  1. We converted departureTime":1502033280 and got below result

1502033280 converts to **Sunday August 06, 2017 19:28:00 (pm) **in time zone Asia/Dubai (GST)

Which is NOT MATCHING with Flightaware DATE and TIME shown on the site MONDAY 07-AUG-201709:34AM +04

B. FLIGHT : EK 404 MONDAY 07-AUG-2017

We tried to find a flight status EK 404 of which is airborne MONDAY 07-AUG-2017 09:34AM +04

Below are the steps followed and found issues, we request your team to address below issues as early as possible:

We invoked SearchBirdseyeInFlight API using below URL to get the result in JSON format

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx … ght?query={ident_or_reg%20{UAE404}}&howMany=20&offset=0
{
“SearchBirdseyeInFlightResult”:{
“next_offset”:-1,
“aircraft”:
{
“faFlightID”:“UAE404-1501824420-airline-0015”,
“ident”:“UAE404”,
“prefix”:“H”,
“type”:“A388”,
“suffix”:“”,
“origin”:“WSSS”,
“destination”:“YMML”,
“timeout”:“0”,
“timestamp”:1502058183,
“departureTime”:1502033280,
“firstPositionTime”:1502033421,
“arrivalTime”:1502058180,
“longitude”:144.84488,
“latitude”:-37.70694,
“lowLongitude”:103.96516,
“lowLatitude”:-37.84259,
“highLongitude”:144.86275,
“highLatitude”:1.32372,
“groundspeed”:489,
“altitude”:11,
“heading”:353,
“altitudeStatus”:“-”,
“updateType”:“A”,
“altitudeChange”:“”,
“waypoints”:“”
}
]
}
}
Below are the Issues:

  1. We converted departureTime":1502033280 and got below result

1502033280 converts to Sunday August 06, 2017 19:28:00 (pm) in time zone Asia/Dubai (GST)

Which is NOT MATCHING with Flightaware DATE and TIME shown on the site MONDAY 07-AUG-201709:34AM +04

  1. We converted “arrivalTime”:1502058180 and got below result

1502058180 converts to Monday August 07, 2017 06:23:00 (am) in time zone Asia/Singapore (SGT)

Which is NOT MATCHING with Flightaware DATE and TIME shown on the site MONDAY 07-AUG-201709:06PM +08

4

In this example I believe your issue is that SearchBirdseyeInFlight did not return the flight you were expecting. UAE404-1501824420-airline-0015 was the Sunday evening flight from Dubai to Melbourne (flightaware.com/live/flight/UAE … /WSSS/YMML). There is a bit of a bug in SearchBirdseyeInFlight where if your search criteria could return multiple flights with that same ident (in this case Birdseye probably had about 3 or 4 UAE404 flights in memory), the one that is retrieved is a bit random. So your results match up with the Sunday evening flight, but that wasn’t the flight you were looking for. We are working on a fix for this issue that should be available later this week or next week, but in the interim you’ll either need to provide additional constraints to the query (perhaps specify an origin and destination or an actualDepartureTime greater than some value). That or you can make a query to FlightInfoEx or GetFlightId to get the flightId first, then use that to query SearchBirdseyeInFlight.

5

Dear Team,

Thank you for the info.

I tried FlightInfoEx API to get the estimatedarrivaltime for a flight which is Airborne (Departure from Origin and still in Air) by using below URL.

xxxxxxxxxxxx@flightxml.flightawa … 5&offset=0

Issues:

  1. I received, 15 results from above URL. it becomes very difficult for me to identify the current Airborne flight from the list.

  2. I passed howMany parameter as 1 assuming this will result in 1 flight detail which is Airborne, but result shows some other flight details.

Please let me know if am missing something to get the current airborne flight details.

Regards,
RizOne4u

6

Yes you’ll need to get more than one result as FlightInfo or FlightInfoEx can return results from in the future. Usually we just recommend deciding on examining the filed_departuretime for the flights and pick the correct one based on that information (ie is it on the day you’re wanting).

7

Dear Team,

Thanks for the reply.

By looking at API’s, FlightInfo belongs to Class 2 and FlightInfoEx belongs to Class 3. There is **PRICE **difference between these two classes.

**what is the difference between FlightInfo or FlightInfoEx ? **

8

FlightInfoEx returns the faFlightID which is a unique identifier for the flight while FlightInfo only returns the ident.