I’m trying to implement the FlightXML API in our website.
I’m testing with this flight here: SWA733
And when I call the Search operation I get that it will depart today and when I call the FlightInfo operation I get that estimated time of arrival is 24 hours later.
Is that normal or I’m doing something wrong here?
Thanks in advance
For that flight I’m currently seeing these values:
{“faFlightID”:“SWA733-1488954359-airline-0865”,“ident”:“SWA733”,“aircrafttype”:“B737”,“filed_ete”:“01:51:00”,“filed_time”:1488954359,“filed_departuretime”:1489147500,“filed_airspeed_kts”:449,“filed_airspeed_mach”:“”,“filed_altitude”:380,“route”:“ALAMO2 HENLY ABI UKDEW ZIGEE ZPLYN3”,“actualdeparturetime”:0,“estimatedarrivaltime”:1489154551,“actualarrivaltime”:0,“diverted”:“”,“origin”:“KSAT”,“destination”:“KDEN”,“originName”:“San Antonio Intl”,“originCity”:“San Antonio, TX”,“destinationName”:“Denver Intl”,“destinationCity”:“Denver, CO”}
Those epoch values correspond to (in UTC):
filed_departuretime | 2017-03-10 12:05:00
estimatedarrivaltime | 2017-03-10 14:02:31
Is that different from what you are seeing?
Ok, here’s what I did. I found airplane with ident “SWA733”. I’ve called the Search method and for “departuretime” I received 2017-03-09 12:10:00 UTC. After that I’ve called the FlightInfo method and I got 2017-03-10 14:10:00 UTC for “estimatedarrivaltime”.
The thing I’m wondering about is that the estimated time of arrival is on the next day and this flight should take a couple of hours to get to its destination.
Ensure that you are actually looking at the same flight by comparing the faFlightID or filed_departuretime values. You should also be using FlightInfoEx instead of FlightInfo.
Be aware that FlightInfo/FlightInfoEx should not be called with just an ident and howMany=1 and blindly depend on the first result returned. You will frequently be returned the upcoming flight that is occurring a day or two in the future. You must specify howMany > 1 and look through the results to find the flight that you are actually interested in.
If you already know the faFlightID of the flight from another Search call, then you can directly pass the faFlightID to FlightInfoEx to get the additional details about precisely that flight.
I’ll keep that in mind, thanks for the help 