Building a website or app and want to include flight information? Perhaps it's a travel app, or simply a website providing local news. Whatever the challenge, you'll need reliable, up-to-the-minute flight information that's relevant to your readers.

That's where the aviationstack API comes in. Offering real-time flight data, this API provides statistics for over 250 countries and more than 13,000 airlines. It's already trusted by over 5,000 companies, and integration with your project is straightforward.

What Is an API?

An application programming interface (API) provides a collection of operations and queries for developers to access. These make it easier to design and build an app, ensuring you have access to the features needed for it to work.

Get live plane data on your site with aviationstack API

APIs are used everywhere. You'll find ones that handle everything from supporting fingerprint reader authentication on phones to sharing photos on Facebook. APIs can also route live data and information stored in a database into an app or website.

In the case of aviationstack API, you get access to a wealth of flight data. Users can find vital flight information if you share the data through your website or app. Perhaps a relative's flight is landing soon; maybe traffic is holding up someone trying catch a flight.

By supplying data to apps and websites via its API, aviationstack can prove a vital feature to your audience.

Features of the Aviationstack API

Offering "free, real-time flight status and global aviation data," the aviationstack API provides extensive flight information. With the right package, your users will also enjoy worldwide API coverage, powerful infrastructure, and a suite of features to suit any budget.

Aviationstack API's flight data provides details on real-time flights and their status. There is also data on historical flights, schedules, airline routes, airport status, aircraft, and more. Aviation data includes:

  • 10,000+ Airports
  • 19,000+ Airplanes
  • 300+ Airplane types
  • 13,000+ Airlines
  • 9,000+ Cities
  • 250+ Countries
  • 500+ Aviation taxes

The API delivers accurate details from a backbone of reliable aviation sources. You can easily find accurate details about any flight, at any stage of its journey. It enables the simple lookup of data for any airport, airline, country, city, route, or details on aviation tax.

Scalable cloud infrastructure, designed to handle almost anything, underpins the vast data available through the aviationstack API. Whether you need thousands or millions of requests per minute, the aviationstack servers are equal to the task.

Get Aviationstack Free, or Pay for Premium Service

Various payment options are available with aviationstack.

The Basic option is $49.99 a month (or $39.99 per month if billed annually) and provides up to 10,000 monthly requests. It includes unlimited support, a commercial license, full aviation data, real-time flights, airline routes, and historical flights. The package also uses HTTPS encryption and an autocomplete feature for queries.

Payment options for the aviationstack API

Need more? The Professional package includes 50,000 requests for $149.99 a month ($119.99 monthly with annual billing). You'll also get the same additional features.

Meanwhile, the Business package is $499.99 a month ($399.99 with annual billing) for all the above, with 250,000 monthly requests. There is also premium support. If this isn't enough, aviationstack also offers an Enterprise option with custom pricing and solutions.

To get started, however, it's smart to stick with the Free plan. This offers 500 free API requests per month---perfect for the development stage of your aviationstack-backed project. While you only get limited support, it still includes access to full aviation data and real-time flights.

Integrate Aviationstack API With Your App or Website Project

To get started with the aviationstack API, start by registering for a free account. Just use your email address, provide any relevant personal details, and select a password.

Moments later, you'll have a free aviationstack API account. Now it's time to get started.

Find and Use Your API Access Key

Sign into your new aviationstack API account to find the API access key. This is a secure key, assigned to you personally. It authenticates with the API and can be refreshed at any time in the aviationstack account dashboard.

Every request you make via the API requires the API access key. A request starts with the base URL:

        https://api.aviationstack.com/v1/
    

(Note that for the free account, you'll need to change the URL to http://. The free account does not support HTTPS.)

A basic request, therefore, might be something like this:

Sample code for an aviationstack API request

The result of this will load pages of data, which you can then present on your webpage.

Query the API Endpoints

Various API endpoints are available with aviationstack. They include the following:

  • Real-Time flights: Look up current flights in real-time
  • Historical flights: Look up flights from the past
  • Airline routes: Look up airline routes
  • Airports: Look up global airports
  • Airlines: Look up global airlines
  • Airplanes: Look up airplane/aircraft
  • Aircraft types: Look up aircraft types
  • Aviation taxes: Look up aviation taxes
  • Cities: Look up global cities
  • Countries: Look up countries

These integrate into queries either as subdirectories of the URL (for example, /flights or /routes) or as extended parameters.

Choose From Six Languages for API Integration

To help you get the most out of aviationstack API, the developers offer support for six languages:

  • PHP
  • Python
  • Nodejs
  • jQuery
  • Go
  • Ruby

You can consult extensive documentation to find the best solution for your project. This covers all API response objects and GET request parameters for each data type provided by the API.

Examples in each programming language are provided, leaving you with little heavy lifting. In short, it shouldn't be long before you're integrating air traffic data on your website with the aviationstack API.

Get Flight Tracking and Airport Timetable Data on Your Site

As you can see, the API provided by aviationstack provides all the air traffic data your audience will need. The API is easy to access, with a straightforward base URL, while the website provides detailed documentation.

In short, the aviationstack API is the number-one option for flight tracking and times. With a wide choice of endpoints, response objects, and request parameters, the API is easy to integrate into your projects.

Want more features for your website or app? We've also looked at the weatherstack API for adding weather information to your project. Alternatively, you might scrape search data with serpstack API.