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OpenFlights – airport and airline data

openflights.org

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Re: OpenFlights – airport and airline data

#21

Post by sokoloff »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #18
sokoloff wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it’s important and hard to get this data, is it really ridiculous that a provider of the data charges $700 for it?

It's only hard to get because IATA doesn't easily provide it. IATA isn't "a" provider of the data, they are the data. It would be like if you had to purchase a list of the bus stops and schedule in your city from your transportation department.

Many (most?) standards bodies charge for their standards documents and data feeds. There are obviously costs associated with running IATA; I don't see why they should be obliged to provide their data for free, especially when the typical user of such data is likely to build a for-profit business on top of it.

I don't think IATA actually assigns the codes, but rather aggregates them. In the US, the FAA assigns the airport identifiers: https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/cip/airport_facility/

Re: OpenFlights – airport and airline data

#22

Post by vkou »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #18
sokoloff wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it’s important and hard to get this data, is it really ridiculous that a provider of the data charges $700 for it?

It's only hard to get because IATA doesn't easily provide it. IATA isn't "a" provider of the data, they are the data. It would be like if you had to purchase a list of the bus stops and schedule in your city from your transportation department.

I have to pay the bus company to ride the bus, it doesn't seem insane that the bus company may want to charge me money if I asked them for a full, comprehensive, organized list of stops and schedules.

Sure, there are reasons for why they would want to make it available for free, but there are also reasons for why they would want to charge me, and they aren't unreasonable. I don't have any fundamental, natural right to a transportation network curating and providing their data for my consumption. It might not care enough about my needs to spend money do so. It might not care enough about my needs to spend money to do so for free.

Re: OpenFlights – airport and airline data

#24

Post by realityking »

sokoloff wrote: post #21
squeaky-clean wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only hard to get because IATA doesn't easily provide it. IATA isn't "a" provider of the data, they are the data. It would be like if you had to purchase a list of the bus stops and schedule in your city from your transportation department.

Many (most?) standards bodies charge for their standards documents and data feeds. There are obviously costs associated with running IATA; I don't see why they should be obliged to provide their data for free, especially when the typical user of such data is likely to build a for-profit business on top of it. I don't think IATA actually assigns the codes, but rather aggregates them. In the US, the FAA assigns the air…

I think the FAA will only assign the four letter ICAO code. The 3 letter IATA code is assigned by them directly: https://www.iata.org/contentassets/1277d04d575843dc80a3f613d...

Re: OpenFlights – airport and airline data

#27

Post by knz »

kingsloi wrote: post #15

For anyone interested, the nice guys at https://aviation-edge.com supplied me access to their flight API so I can track how many flights fly directly over my little community in Gary Indiana: https://millerbeach.community I wish I was able to track more frequently than every 15 minutes (free version api max, etc), because some aircraft pass overhead before they're picked up, so it's not the most accurate, but a rough…

Nice job on your community website!

You may already be aware of this but if you want real-time ADS-B, check out PiAware (https://flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/) as a low cost option to run your own ADS-B ground station via a raspberry pi.

Re: OpenFlights – airport and airline data

#28

Post by notahacker »

ant6n wrote: post #16
kingsloi wrote: post #15

For anyone interested, the nice guys at https://aviation-edge.com supplied me access to their flight API so I can track how many flights fly directly over my little community in Gary Indiana: https://millerbeach.community I wish I was able to track more frequently than every 15 minutes (free version api max, etc), because some aircraft pass overhead before they're picked up, so it's not the most accurate, but a rough…

I’m working on some project to compare historical availabilities of seats between city pairs in Europe, too bad their historical api doesnt return aircraft type (so number of seats its unknown). I also couldn’t find how far back their data goes. ... for my project, I actually got some historical paper schedules of the official aviation guide, basically they’re phone books. I hope to find a decent/affordable database…

The Official Aviation Guide became OAG who will have what you need in digital form but at steep commercial rates, as will their competitor Innovata (Cirium)

The actual seats bit is surprisingly complex if you want accurate figures, as the same aircraft type can have wildly different numbers of seats depending on layout and class configuration. OAG/Innovata's standard schedule product has the aircraft variant normally assigned to a route shown, and they survey the airlines on the seating configurations of their aircraft calculate capacity and ASKS. I believe Cirium now cross reference this with flight tracking data to get data based on the actual aircraft used (which solves edge cases like substitutions or an airline operating aircraft with differently configured A330-200s on different routes) - doing that was part of the masterplan when I worked for them before they acquired Flightstats.

Re: OpenFlights – airport and airline data

#29

Post by notahacker »

asix66 wrote: post #23

Try the "crowdsourced" ADS-B Exchange site, which shows unfiltered flight data. [0] For more info, check their FAQ. Live data: https://globe.adsbexchange.com [0] https://www.adsbexchange.com

And if the OP has a strong personal interest in tracking flights over his community, he should pay particular attention to the page about antenna and setting up his own tracker
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