9 ms·

OpenFlights – airport and airline data

224 points by cyberlab 5y ago

leugim 5y ago
The site seems down. Archive.org backup: https://web.archive.org/web/20210427143048/https://openflights.org/data.html https://web.archive.org/web/20210427143048/https://openfligh...
- alifaziz 5y ago
  ..and link to github https://github.com/jpatokal/openflights https://github.com/jpatokal/openflights
einpoklum 5y ago
The US Bureau of Transport statistics provides historic flight schedule and actual flight performance data in CSV tables: http://www.transtats.bts.gov/DL_SelectFields.asp?Table_ID=236&DB_Short_Name=On-Time http://www.transtats.bts.gov/DL_SelectFields.asp?Table_ID=23... But it's cumbersome to work with. I am working (on and off) on a DBMS benchmark based on this data. As part of that endeavor, I have a script which: * Automates downloading the CSVs. * Creates an appropriate SQL database schema. * Performs a bit of rudimentary cleaning (e.g. invalid character codes; optional) * Loads the CSV files into the database. So that, from the command-line, you could get the flight on-time performance data by merely typing in something like: /path/to/usdt-ontime-tools/scripts/setup-usdt-ontime-db -r -db-name ontime --first-year 2019 --last-year 2020 it's available within this repository: https://github.com/eyalroz/usdt-ontime-tools https://github.com/eyalroz/usdt-ontime-tools the caveat is that, for now, the only DBMS supported directly is MonetDB: https://www.monetdb.org/ https://www.monetdb.org/ , a FOSS analytics-oriented columnar DBMS. An adaptation of the script for other systems (MySQL/Maria, PostgreSQL) should be straightforward, since the commands are SQL'ish after all. If you're interested in that, open an issue or write me.
- bernardv 5y ago
  Spent a lot of time with that dataset a couple of years ago, looking at historical flight delays and cancellation rates. If only this type of data was available outside of the US. The data is updated daily I believe and provides a lot of detail and is of pretty good quality.
wyozi 5y ago
Downloadable airport data on OpenFlights tends to be quite dated, missing notably e.g. the Berlin Brandenburg Airport. OurAirports (https://ourairports.com/ https://ourairports.com/) has a slightly different format but the data there is significantly more recent. source: started with OpenFlights but had to switch to OurAirports for my project https://flightnotebook.com https://flightnotebook.com
Fomite 5y ago
Briefly got interested, then hit "Warning: The third-party that OpenFlights uses for route data ceased providing updates in June 2014. The current data is of historical value only."
- tpmx 5y ago
  http://info.flightmapper.net/ http://info.flightmapper.net/ is the gold standard for manual use, as far as I'm concerned. Would be lovely to have programmatic access to this data. They say that they get their data from Cirium.
phsource 5y ago
It's ridiculous that the only original source of this data, the IATA [0], charges $700+ for this list, so kudos to OpenFlights. I can't stress just how important (and how hard) it is to get a great source of data for airports -- I've now built 3 travel-related projects (the latest, Wanderlog [https://wanderlog.com https://wanderlog.com], keeps people's flight reservations, so uses it for an autocomplete), and it's been a key building block for all of them. The main datasets we use are: - OpenFlights [1]: mentioned in this post, but this dataset was great since it had timezone too. - OurAirports [2]: no timezone here, but the "type" and "scheduled_service" columns in this dataset are essential. "Type" lets you distinguish between small/medium/large airports, and "scheduled_service" lets you easily filter out airports without real flights (which you often might not care about). - Random other GitHub Gist [3]: I have no idea where this data comes from, but it was surprisingly complete and has a few golden nuggets like "num_flights" and "runway_length" in addition to "timezone". The presence of a "woeid" suggests Yahoo-related origins, but it's hard to be sure. - We now supplement this with airports from autocomplete APIs like Skyscanner's, because they're still the most up-to-date. Long story short, it'd be AWESOME to have one complete, updated database with all this data in one place. This kind of data really should be public and a public service, but until then it's unfortunately up to the community. [0] https://www.iata.org/en/publications/store/airline-coding-directory/ https://www.iata.org/en/publications/store/airline-coding-di... [1] https://github.com/jpatokal/openflights/ https://github.com/jpatokal/openflights/ [2] http://ourairports.com/data/ http://ourairports.com/data/ [3] https://gist.github.com/tdreyno/4278655 https://gist.github.com/tdreyno/4278655
- chillydawg 5y ago
  openstreetmap might happen to have a list of airports with decent metadata, but it'll have zero info about actual flights.
  - angott 5y ago
    Yep. It is quite good for some data that volunteers can provide from open data. Things like runway numbers, surface material and length.
- 5y ago
gbrindisi 5y ago
does anyone know any current dataset I could query to check historical routes status? Since the pandemic I've found plenty of airlines selling tickets and systematically cancel the flight a few days before. I was looking to scrape some data to avoid this kind of unreliable flights.
- einpoklum 5y ago
  Check out my other comment... The USDT on-time performance data goes back as far as October 1987 (and you can specify the period to the download script with the --first-year , --first-month , --last-year , --last-month command-line switches). Once the data is loaded you can use spiffy SQL to print out routes the way you like them. Unfortunately the data is also a bit dirty (which is something I'm working on).
kingsloi 5y ago
For anyone interested, the nice guys at https://aviation-edge.com 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 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 figure to/from O'Hare, Midway, and Gary
- ant6n 5y ago
  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 for more recent data. (MIT students/alumns actually get access to a database going back to 1979, but alas no access for outsiders...)
  - notahacker 5y ago
    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.
- knz 5y ago
  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/ https://flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/) as a low cost option to run your own ADS-B ground station via a raspberry pi.
JamilD 5y ago
A few years ago I tried writing a Python wrapper around SABRE's API to get pricing, route, and schedule data, which seemed to work reasonably well. It likely doesn't work anymore, but it was a fun exercise. https://github.com/Jamil/sabre_dev_studio https://github.com/Jamil/sabre_dev_studio I wish I had access to the GDS data to get realtime seat/award availability, but I couldn't find any pricing information to get that information through Sabre's API. Does anyone know how much that costs, or if there are any services which provide it as an API? I use ExpertFlyer for personal use, but ideally I'd want to get that information at the source…
- jsjohnst 5y ago
  I’d really like to know this too, but been unable to get a price either. I also really want an API (ideally with historical data available) with fare pricing data too, but not been able to get a quote on that either.
  - alas44 5y ago
    You can both take a look at Amadeus for dev (Amadeus is the biggest GDS) https://developers.amadeus.com https://developers.amadeus.com More info on API here https://github.com/amadeus4dev/hackathon-starter/blob/master/cheatsheets/amadeus4dev.pdf https://github.com/amadeus4dev/hackathon-starter/blob/master... Disclaimer I work for Amadeus, but actually never used this API service, I'd be interested in your feedback
    - jsjohnst 5y ago
      I’ll look into this API, thanks! Everything I’ve tried previously I ran into limitations that blocked me from building the project I was working on.
      - alas44 5y ago
        Top, do not hesitate to share your feedback, if anything can be improved I can try to forward it internally
fossforall 5y ago
Very cool, disappointing about the recency of the data
asix66 5y ago
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 https://globe.adsbexchange.com [0] https://www.adsbexchange.com https://www.adsbexchange.com
- notahacker 5y ago
  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
radelaine 5y ago
For those who want to jump in and query this dataset, I uploaded it here: https://bit.io/boyd/airports https://bit.io/boyd/airports I'm still working on bit.io and would love feedback so hit me.
- sm4rk0 5y ago
  Thank you for discovering bit.io!
jjwiseman 5y ago
If you need airport or airspace data, openaip seems to be decent: http://www.openaip.net/ http://www.openaip.net/ For some reason they make you register in order to download the data, and the site is a bit confusing, but the data seems good.
- jjwiseman 5y ago
  Here's an app I wrote for FS2020 that uses OpenAIP airspace data: https://twitter.com/lemonodor/status/1384611707314606090 https://twitter.com/lemonodor/status/1384611707314606090
rumblestrut 5y ago
I wish there was open train data.
- thamer 5y ago
  Here's my chance to plug something I wrote long ago (back in 2012), and revived earlier this month. I used the train/bus/riverboat schedules from Transport for London (TfL) to create an animated view over 24 hours of every single vehicle as it journeys through London. The 2021 version is in 4K at 60 fps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rj60B7w59s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rj60B7w59s – with details posted here: https://log.kv.io/post/2012/06/04/public-transports-in-london#april-2021-update https://log.kv.io/post/2012/06/04/public-transports-in-londo... "Open train data" is a bit vague without mentioning where these trains might be, but I did find the London Tube schedule[1] in GTFS[2] format, as well as the bus schedule[3] also in GTFS format. Look for your city or country name followed by "open data" and you might find interesting datasets. In the UK the National Public Transport Data Repository (NPTDR) publishes a database of every public transport journey in Great Britain for a selected week in October each year[4] (only goes until 2011 though). [1] Tube, scheduled trips: https://hash.ai/@tfl/tfl-gtfs https://hash.ai/@tfl/tfl-gtfs [2] GTFS is a CSV-based transit data format: https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs/reference https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs/reference [3] Buses, scheduled trips: https://data.bus-data.dft.gov.uk/timetable/download/ https://data.bus-data.dft.gov.uk/timetable/download/ [4] NPTDR database: https://data.gov.uk/dataset/d1f9e79f-d9db-44d0-b7b1-41c216fe5df6/national-public-transport-data-repository-nptdr https://data.gov.uk/dataset/d1f9e79f-d9db-44d0-b7b1-41c216fe...
  - indyfromoz 5y ago
    Talking about trains and data about trains, I really dig this visualisation - https://minitokyo3d.com/ https://minitokyo3d.com/
amatecha 5y ago
You can get free enterprise access to a lot of the major flight tracker services by setting up an ADSB receiver and feeding the data to them. Basically they give you full access to everything as if you were paying for the top tier of their services, because you're helping increase the coverage of their data. A few such services: https://www.flightradar24.com https://www.flightradar24.com https://flightaware.com/ https://flightaware.com/ https://www.radarbox.com/ https://www.radarbox.com/ https://skyscanworld.com/ https://skyscanworld.com/ There's also https://www.adsbexchange.com/ https://www.adsbexchange.com/ which doesn't filter their data (probably much to the chagrin of various businesses and governments). If you see/hear a weird plane above and you can't find it on the commercial services above, check ADSB Exchange.
- eigen 5y ago
  > You can get free enterprise access to a lot of the major flight tracker services by setting up an ADSB receiver and feeding the data to them. Basically they give you full access to everything as if you were paying for the top tier of their services, because you're helping increase the coverage of their data. "top tier" may be overstating it but setting up a RPi and $20 USB ASDB receiver will get you the $90/month Enterprise feed [1]. Still a great deal if this is a topic that interests you. [1] https://flightaware.com/adsb/ https://flightaware.com/adsb/
- tpmx 5y ago
  Not the same thing. Scheduled future/historic flight data vs observed realtime/historic flight data.
  - amatecha 5y ago
    They do give historic data, but yeah I don't know offhand which ones give comprehensive direct API access just by feeding ADS-B data. RadarBox seems to. FR24 and FA require you to contact them -- I've never done this so I don't know how much friction the process entails, or what kind of API limits you may be subject to. Probably depends on your intended application.
ALittleLight 5y ago
Why don't airlines provide a good free API for flights and reservations? I would think they would want developers to help make accessing their offerings and buying them easier.
- J5892 5y ago
  Skiplagged.com (and the legal issues around it) is a good example of why they may not want that data easily accessible. But other than that, I assume there's a lot of money in partnerships with sites like Kayak and Priceline. But I'm not even sure which direction that money flows.
  - ALittleLight 5y ago
    I also don't understand why they objected to skiplagged. If they make money on the flight if I'm in the seat, wouldn't they make slightly more (saving on fuel) if I'm not on it? Why would they care? Plus, the slightly less populated flight might be a bit more pleasant to the passengers sitting nearby where the missing person would've sat.
    - J5892 5y ago
      Because If you didn't use it you'd be paying more money for the flight you did take. Also they don't care about giving coach passengers a pleasant experience. They'd remove the seats altogether if they could.
- notahacker 5y ago
  APIs to airline reservation systems already exist, they're just supported by the likes of Amadeus that provide the relevant IT infrastructure to the airlines as well as distribution services for travel agents and OTAs to book [nearly] all the airlines Since finding and booking flights is actually trivially easy for the consumer already, it's actually in the interests of airlines (as well as the middlemen) to be cautious about who gets access to which API function, especially when it comes to actually selling tickets. At the extreme end of the scale, some low cost carriers can only be booked on their website, because they make more in upsell from the booking flow than they could make with extra bookings from other channels
atbpaca 5y ago
Interesting! In addition to the links already shared, I use OpenTravelData, available at https://github.com/opentraveldata/opentraveldata https://github.com/opentraveldata/opentraveldata, which consolidates airport information from different sources, but also data on aircrafts, airlines, etc.
Jemm 5y ago
typing in Toronto does not return anything, neither do many of the smaller airport ICAO I trired.
rkwasny 5y ago
In the past I wanted to build a system that checks flight paths and will tell you what kind of plane noise you can expect in the area where you want to buy a house. Anyone build it yet/ needs something like this?

224 points by cyberlab 5y ago

The site seems down. Archive.org backup: https://web.archive.org/web/20210427143048/https://openflights.org/data.html https://web.archive.org/web/20210427143048/https://openfligh...

alifaziz 5y ago
..and link to github https://github.com/jpatokal/openflights https://github.com/jpatokal/openflights

einpoklum 5y ago

The US Bureau of Transport statistics provides historic flight schedule and actual flight performance data in CSV tables: http://www.transtats.bts.gov/DL_SelectFields.asp?Table_ID=236&DB_Short_Name=On-Time http://www.transtats.bts.gov/DL_SelectFields.asp?Table_ID=23... But it's cumbersome to work with. I am working (on and off) on a DBMS benchmark based on this data. As part of that endeavor, I have a script which: * Automates downloading the CSVs. * Creates an appropriate SQL database schema. * Performs a bit of rudimentary cleaning (e.g. invalid character codes; optional) * Loads the CSV files into the database. So that, from the command-line, you could get the flight on-time performance data by merely typing in something like: /path/to/usdt-ontime-tools/scripts/setup-usdt-ontime-db -r -db-name ontime --first-year 2019 --last-year 2020 it's available within this repository: https://github.com/eyalroz/usdt-ontime-tools https://github.com/eyalroz/usdt-ontime-tools the caveat is that, for now, the only DBMS supported directly is MonetDB: https://www.monetdb.org/ https://www.monetdb.org/ , a FOSS analytics-oriented columnar DBMS. An adaptation of the script for other systems (MySQL/Maria, PostgreSQL) should be straightforward, since the commands are SQL'ish after all. If you're interested in that, open an issue or write me.

bernardv 5y ago
Spent a lot of time with that dataset a couple of years ago, looking at historical flight delays and cancellation rates. If only this type of data was available outside of the US. The data is updated daily I believe and provides a lot of detail and is of pretty good quality.

wyozi 5y ago

Downloadable airport data on OpenFlights tends to be quite dated, missing notably e.g. the Berlin Brandenburg Airport. OurAirports (https://ourairports.com/ https://ourairports.com/) has a slightly different format but the data there is significantly more recent. source: started with OpenFlights but had to switch to OurAirports for my project https://flightnotebook.com https://flightnotebook.com

Fomite 5y ago

Briefly got interested, then hit "Warning: The third-party that OpenFlights uses for route data ceased providing updates in June 2014. The current data is of historical value only."

tpmx 5y ago
http://info.flightmapper.net/ http://info.flightmapper.net/ is the gold standard for manual use, as far as I'm concerned. Would be lovely to have programmatic access to this data. They say that they get their data from Cirium.

phsource 5y ago

It's ridiculous that the only original source of this data, the IATA [0], charges $700+ for this list, so kudos to OpenFlights. I can't stress just how important (and how hard) it is to get a great source of data for airports -- I've now built 3 travel-related projects (the latest, Wanderlog [https://wanderlog.com https://wanderlog.com], keeps people's flight reservations, so uses it for an autocomplete), and it's been a key building block for all of them. The main datasets we use are: - OpenFlights [1]: mentioned in this post, but this dataset was great since it had timezone too. - OurAirports [2]: no timezone here, but the "type" and "scheduled_service" columns in this dataset are essential. "Type" lets you distinguish between small/medium/large airports, and "scheduled_service" lets you easily filter out airports without real flights (which you often might not care about). - Random other GitHub Gist [3]: I have no idea where this data comes from, but it was surprisingly complete and has a few golden nuggets like "num_flights" and "runway_length" in addition to "timezone". The presence of a "woeid" suggests Yahoo-related origins, but it's hard to be sure. - We now supplement this with airports from autocomplete APIs like Skyscanner's, because they're still the most up-to-date. Long story short, it'd be AWESOME to have one complete, updated database with all this data in one place. This kind of data really should be public and a public service, but until then it's unfortunately up to the community. [0] https://www.iata.org/en/publications/store/airline-coding-directory/ https://www.iata.org/en/publications/store/airline-coding-di... [1] https://github.com/jpatokal/openflights/ https://github.com/jpatokal/openflights/ [2] http://ourairports.com/data/ http://ourairports.com/data/ [3] https://gist.github.com/tdreyno/4278655 https://gist.github.com/tdreyno/4278655

chillydawg 5y ago
openstreetmap might happen to have a list of airports with decent metadata, but it'll have zero info about actual flights.
- angott 5y ago
  Yep. It is quite good for some data that volunteers can provide from open data. Things like runway numbers, surface material and length.
5y ago

gbrindisi 5y ago

does anyone know any current dataset I could query to check historical routes status? Since the pandemic I've found plenty of airlines selling tickets and systematically cancel the flight a few days before. I was looking to scrape some data to avoid this kind of unreliable flights.

einpoklum 5y ago
Check out my other comment... The USDT on-time performance data goes back as far as October 1987 (and you can specify the period to the download script with the --first-year , --first-month , --last-year , --last-month command-line switches). Once the data is loaded you can use spiffy SQL to print out routes the way you like them. Unfortunately the data is also a bit dirty (which is something I'm working on).

kingsloi 5y ago

For anyone interested, the nice guys at https://aviation-edge.com 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 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 figure to/from O'Hare, Midway, and Gary

ant6n 5y ago
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 for more recent data. (MIT students/alumns actually get access to a database going back to 1979, but alas no access for outsiders...)
- notahacker 5y ago
  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.
knz 5y ago
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/ https://flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/) as a low cost option to run your own ADS-B ground station via a raspberry pi.

JamilD 5y ago

A few years ago I tried writing a Python wrapper around SABRE's API to get pricing, route, and schedule data, which seemed to work reasonably well. It likely doesn't work anymore, but it was a fun exercise. https://github.com/Jamil/sabre_dev_studio https://github.com/Jamil/sabre_dev_studio I wish I had access to the GDS data to get realtime seat/award availability, but I couldn't find any pricing information to get that information through Sabre's API. Does anyone know how much that costs, or if there are any services which provide it as an API? I use ExpertFlyer for personal use, but ideally I'd want to get that information at the source…

jsjohnst 5y ago
I’d really like to know this too, but been unable to get a price either. I also really want an API (ideally with historical data available) with fare pricing data too, but not been able to get a quote on that either.
- alas44 5y ago
  You can both take a look at Amadeus for dev (Amadeus is the biggest GDS) https://developers.amadeus.com https://developers.amadeus.com More info on API here https://github.com/amadeus4dev/hackathon-starter/blob/master/cheatsheets/amadeus4dev.pdf https://github.com/amadeus4dev/hackathon-starter/blob/master... Disclaimer I work for Amadeus, but actually never used this API service, I'd be interested in your feedback
  - jsjohnst 5y ago
    I’ll look into this API, thanks! Everything I’ve tried previously I ran into limitations that blocked me from building the project I was working on.
    - alas44 5y ago
      Top, do not hesitate to share your feedback, if anything can be improved I can try to forward it internally

fossforall 5y ago

Very cool, disappointing about the recency of the data

asix66 5y ago

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 https://globe.adsbexchange.com [0] https://www.adsbexchange.com https://www.adsbexchange.com

notahacker 5y ago
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

radelaine 5y ago

For those who want to jump in and query this dataset, I uploaded it here: https://bit.io/boyd/airports https://bit.io/boyd/airports I'm still working on bit.io and would love feedback so hit me.

sm4rk0 5y ago
Thank you for discovering bit.io!

jjwiseman 5y ago

If you need airport or airspace data, openaip seems to be decent: http://www.openaip.net/ http://www.openaip.net/ For some reason they make you register in order to download the data, and the site is a bit confusing, but the data seems good.

jjwiseman 5y ago
Here's an app I wrote for FS2020 that uses OpenAIP airspace data: https://twitter.com/lemonodor/status/1384611707314606090 https://twitter.com/lemonodor/status/1384611707314606090

rumblestrut 5y ago

I wish there was open train data.

thamer 5y ago
Here's my chance to plug something I wrote long ago (back in 2012), and revived earlier this month. I used the train/bus/riverboat schedules from Transport for London (TfL) to create an animated view over 24 hours of every single vehicle as it journeys through London. The 2021 version is in 4K at 60 fps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rj60B7w59s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rj60B7w59s – with details posted here: https://log.kv.io/post/2012/06/04/public-transports-in-london#april-2021-update https://log.kv.io/post/2012/06/04/public-transports-in-londo... "Open train data" is a bit vague without mentioning where these trains might be, but I did find the London Tube schedule[1] in GTFS[2] format, as well as the bus schedule[3] also in GTFS format. Look for your city or country name followed by "open data" and you might find interesting datasets. In the UK the National Public Transport Data Repository (NPTDR) publishes a database of every public transport journey in Great Britain for a selected week in October each year[4] (only goes until 2011 though). [1] Tube, scheduled trips: https://hash.ai/@tfl/tfl-gtfs https://hash.ai/@tfl/tfl-gtfs [2] GTFS is a CSV-based transit data format: https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs/reference https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs/reference [3] Buses, scheduled trips: https://data.bus-data.dft.gov.uk/timetable/download/ https://data.bus-data.dft.gov.uk/timetable/download/ [4] NPTDR database: https://data.gov.uk/dataset/d1f9e79f-d9db-44d0-b7b1-41c216fe5df6/national-public-transport-data-repository-nptdr https://data.gov.uk/dataset/d1f9e79f-d9db-44d0-b7b1-41c216fe...
- indyfromoz 5y ago
  Talking about trains and data about trains, I really dig this visualisation - https://minitokyo3d.com/ https://minitokyo3d.com/

amatecha 5y ago

You can get free enterprise access to a lot of the major flight tracker services by setting up an ADSB receiver and feeding the data to them. Basically they give you full access to everything as if you were paying for the top tier of their services, because you're helping increase the coverage of their data. A few such services: https://www.flightradar24.com https://www.flightradar24.com https://flightaware.com/ https://flightaware.com/ https://www.radarbox.com/ https://www.radarbox.com/ https://skyscanworld.com/ https://skyscanworld.com/ There's also https://www.adsbexchange.com/ https://www.adsbexchange.com/ which doesn't filter their data (probably much to the chagrin of various businesses and governments). If you see/hear a weird plane above and you can't find it on the commercial services above, check ADSB Exchange.

eigen 5y ago
> You can get free enterprise access to a lot of the major flight tracker services by setting up an ADSB receiver and feeding the data to them. Basically they give you full access to everything as if you were paying for the top tier of their services, because you're helping increase the coverage of their data. "top tier" may be overstating it but setting up a RPi and $20 USB ASDB receiver will get you the $90/month Enterprise feed [1]. Still a great deal if this is a topic that interests you. [1] https://flightaware.com/adsb/ https://flightaware.com/adsb/
tpmx 5y ago
Not the same thing. Scheduled future/historic flight data vs observed realtime/historic flight data.
- amatecha 5y ago
  They do give historic data, but yeah I don't know offhand which ones give comprehensive direct API access just by feeding ADS-B data. RadarBox seems to. FR24 and FA require you to contact them -- I've never done this so I don't know how much friction the process entails, or what kind of API limits you may be subject to. Probably depends on your intended application.

ALittleLight 5y ago

Why don't airlines provide a good free API for flights and reservations? I would think they would want developers to help make accessing their offerings and buying them easier.

J5892 5y ago
Skiplagged.com (and the legal issues around it) is a good example of why they may not want that data easily accessible. But other than that, I assume there's a lot of money in partnerships with sites like Kayak and Priceline. But I'm not even sure which direction that money flows.
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  I also don't understand why they objected to skiplagged. If they make money on the flight if I'm in the seat, wouldn't they make slightly more (saving on fuel) if I'm not on it? Why would they care? Plus, the slightly less populated flight might be a bit more pleasant to the passengers sitting nearby where the missing person would've sat.
  - J5892 5y ago
    Because If you didn't use it you'd be paying more money for the flight you did take. Also they don't care about giving coach passengers a pleasant experience. They'd remove the seats altogether if they could.
notahacker 5y ago
APIs to airline reservation systems already exist, they're just supported by the likes of Amadeus that provide the relevant IT infrastructure to the airlines as well as distribution services for travel agents and OTAs to book [nearly] all the airlines Since finding and booking flights is actually trivially easy for the consumer already, it's actually in the interests of airlines (as well as the middlemen) to be cautious about who gets access to which API function, especially when it comes to actually selling tickets. At the extreme end of the scale, some low cost carriers can only be booked on their website, because they make more in upsell from the booking flow than they could make with extra bookings from other channels

atbpaca 5y ago

Interesting! In addition to the links already shared, I use OpenTravelData, available at https://github.com/opentraveldata/opentraveldata https://github.com/opentraveldata/opentraveldata, which consolidates airport information from different sources, but also data on aircrafts, airlines, etc.

Jemm 5y ago

typing in Toronto does not return anything, neither do many of the smaller airport ICAO I trired.

rkwasny 5y ago

In the past I wanted to build a system that checks flight paths and will tell you what kind of plane noise you can expect in the area where you want to buy a house. Anyone build it yet/ needs something like this?