which field is most appropriate for viewing future flights

FlightAware AeroAPI
1

I’m using the API and need to know which field is best to query to retrieve future flights. FlightAware recommends creating alerts 1 or 2 days in advance, but to create an alert I need the flight information. However, sometimes I can’t get a list of future flights from a specific airport. In my project, I’m only controlling traffic from one airport with the code FNBJ, but I noticed, for example, that when listing flights from that airport for tomorrow (March 23rd), it tells me there are no flights. Or perhaps I’m querying the wrong field to list the flights. I need help understanding which field is most appropriate for viewing future flights.

2

To get future departures, you should use:
get /airports/{id}/flights/scheduled_departures

Doing so for tomorrow (start = 2026-03-25T00:00:00Z and end=2026-03-26T00:00:00Z), returned 22 flights.

I think you may have instead been trying: get /airports/{id}/flights/departures. That endpoint will only return flights that have actually departed, thus specifying a date for tomorrow would return no flights.

Welcome to FlightAware!

3

Hi Tammy,

Thank you for your reply — that was very helpful.

I understand the distinction you made between:

  • /airports/{id}/flights/departures (actual flights)

  • /airports/{id}/flights/scheduled_departures (future flights)

However, in my case, I’m not only interested in departures.

My goal is to monitor all traffic (both arrivals and departures) for a specific airport (FNBJ) on a daily basis, and to generate alerts for those flights.

So I need to reliably retrieve:

  • Future departures

  • Future arrivals

  • And ideally all flights associated with the airport for a given day

At the moment, I am using:

/airports/{id}/flights

but I’ve noticed that it sometimes does not return flights for future dates (e.g., tomorrow), which makes it difficult to create alerts in advance.

From your experience, would the correct approach be to combine:

  • /airports/{id}/flights/scheduled_departures

  • /airports/{id}/flights/scheduled_arrivals

Or is there a more appropriate endpoint or strategy to consistently retrieve all flights (arrivals and departures) for a given airport and date, especially for future days?

My main objective is to ensure I can reliably build alerts for all flights associated with that airport.

Thanks again for your help!

4

Yes, you should use the following two for future departures and arrivals. That will enable you to get precisely what you want, and specify meaningful start/end datetime parameters for each of them.

  • /airports/{id}/flights/scheduled_departures

  • /airports/{id}/flights/scheduled_arrivals

5

Hello,

Thank you for your clarification — that helps a lot.

I am currently also experiencing some difficulties with alerts. When I was using the previous endpoint (/airports/{id}/flights/), I was able to successfully create alerts and verify that they were correctly created and visible on the FlightAware website.

I have also configured my webhook endpoints correctly, and manual tests confirm that my webhook is working as expected.

However, despite this:

  • I have never received any alert notifications for any flight,

  • and I also do not see any delivery attempts or logs in the Notifications panel.

Could this behavior be related to using /airports/{id}/flights/ instead of the scheduled endpoints (scheduled_departures / scheduled_arrivals), or is there another potential reason why alerts are not being triggered or delivered?

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,