FlightAware is an American multi-national

technology company A technology company (or tech company) is an electronics-based technological company, including, for example, business relating to digital electronics, software, and internet-related services, such as e-commerce services. Details According to '' ...

that provides real-time, historical, and predictive

flight tracking Flight tracking is a service that involves the tracking of flights, aircraft and airport activity, often using software. Overview Flight tracking enables travellers as well as those picking up travellers after a flight to know whether a flight h ...

data and products. , it is the world's largest flight tracking platform, with a network of over 32,000 ADS-B ground stations in 200 countries. FlightAware also provides aviation data and predicted

ETA Eta (uppercase , lowercase ; grc, ἦτα ''ē̂ta'' or ell, ήτα ''ita'' ) is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the close front unrounded vowel . Originally denoting the voiceless glottal fricative in most dialects, ...

s to airlines, airport operators, and software developers. FlightAware is a subsidiary of Collins Aerospace, with headquarters in

Eleven Greenway Plaza Greenway Plaza is a business district located along Interstate 69 (U.S. Highway 59) within the Interstate 610 loop in southwestern Houston, Texas, west of Downtown and east of Uptown. The district is located immediately west of Upper Kirby, n ...

in Houston and sales offices in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, Austin,

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...

, and

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

History

In 2004, CEO Daniel Baker started exploring the idea of creating a free flight tracking service as he wanted a way for his family to track his private flights around the country. At the time, there were few enterprise solutions that offered this kind of service. Baker recruited friends

Karl Lehenbauer Karl Lehenbauer (born April 5, 1958) was the founder of NeoSoft in the early 1990s, which was the first Internet Service Provider in the southern United States as well as the first to offer cable modem service in Houston, Texas, among other techno ...

and David McNett to help create a free public flight tracking service. On March 17, 2005, FlightAware was officially founded and began processing live flight data. It earned over one million dollars in revenue in its first 18 months. FlightAware has been profitable since 2006 and is growing at the rate of 40-50% per year, as of April 2014. On November 16, 2021, Collins Aerospace completed its acquisition of FlightAware.

Website

The company's website provides

information and notifications of private and commercial flights as well as airport activity, flight and airport maps with weather, aviation statistics, flight planning and

instrument flight rules In aviation, instrument flight rules (IFR) is one of two sets of regulations governing all aspects of civil aviation aircraft operations; the other is visual flight rules (VFR). The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) ''Instrument F ...

procedures for airports in the United States and Australia. In addition, the site includes pilot services such as flight planning, aviation news, photos, and an aviation discussion forum. Users can register with the site for free, which adds features and functionality as well as the ability to participate in community features. Registration allows users to upload photos, submit aviation-related news ("squawks"), participate in discussion forums, and set up aircraft alerts in addition to numerous other features. FlightAware reports over ten million registered users. FlightAware serves over 500 million flight tracking pages to over 12 million users per month .

Commercial products and services

FlightAware provides various paid commercial services designed to support aviation-related businesses, consumers, and FBOs. These services provide a significant portion of FlightAware's revenue.

FlightAware Global

FlightAware Global makes worldwide flight tracking available for aircraft operators via satellite or VHF data-link (VDL) through the FlightAware website. This service requires data service with a participating data-link provider, and combines this data with existing FlightAware ANSP data feeds in 50+ countries and FlightAware's ADS-B data in 100+ countries. FlightAware integrates with all major aircraft datalink services using

ACARS In aviation, ACARS (; an acronym for Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System) is a digital datalink system for transmission of short messages between aircraft and ground stations via airband radio or satellite. The protocol was des ...

or similar protocols via SATCOM or VDL, including: *

ARINC Aeronautical Radio, Incorporated (ARINC), established in 1929, was a major provider of transport communications and systems engineering solutions for eight industries: aviation, airports, defense, government, healthcare, networks, security, and t ...

DeLorme DeLorme is the producer of personal satellite tracking, messaging, and navigation technology. The company’s main product, ''inReach'', integrates GPS and satellite technologies. ''inReach'' provides the ability to send and receive text message ...

* Garmin * Honeywell Global Data Center (GDC) * Satcom Direct *

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Spidertracks Spidertracks is a privately held New Zealand based company specialising in the development of hardware and software for the general aviation industry. The company specialises in flight tracking, aviation communication, and flight data acqui ...

Universal Weather and Aviation Universal Weather and Aviation, Inc. (commonly called Universal or Universal Weather) is a privately held company headquartered in Houston, Texas that provides products and services for the general aviation industry. Its customers include owne ...

UVdatalink For aircraft with cockpit datalink services, FlightAware can provide real-time worldwide flight tracking and status as well as text messaging and other operational dispatch services in some cases.

Selective unblocking

A selective unblocking service is available for aircraft owners and operators to selectively choose friends, family, employees, and business associates who are allowed to track an aircraft's movements. When a selective unblocking is used, the aircraft movements remained blocked to the general public. An owner or operator can opt to do this for privacy or security reasons.

FlightAware TV

FlightAware TV is a web-based aircraft situational display scaled for an HDTV. FlightAware TV can be customized to show a "fleet view" to monitor an entire fleet or in "airport" view to monitor airport activity such as departures and arrivals.

FBO ToolBox

FBO ToolBox is a Web-based, market-analysis and flight-tracking application that allows FBO managers insight into their customers. Primary features include competitive fuel price analysis, airport traffic analysis, AMSTAT operator information, airport history reports, and top origins/destinations. A proprietary fuel-burn calculator estimates the number of gallons necessary to complete a filed flight plan, and can deliver FBO managers a picture of potential fuel sales on any given day. In May 2012, FlightAware launched "FBO ToolBox Europe" for airport operators in Europe.

Custom reports

Custom reports can be generated with a variety of parameters to aid aircraft owners, operators, airports, and business owners in planning decisions. For example, a historical report can be compiled to analyze air traffic frequency at a particular airport.

Premium accounts

Premium user accounts allow members access to unlimited flight alerts, increased visibility of historical flight data, European weather, tail number data, full screen HDTV maps, fleet tracking, and the ability to view more flights per page. There are three levels of premium accounts that are available for a monthly fee.

ADS-B

Automatic dependent surveillance – broadcast (ADS-B) is a technology for tracking aircraft. FlightAware operates a network of ADS-B receivers for tracking ADS-B equipped aircraft. FlightAware offers that professional operators of existing ADS-B sites can connect their receivers to FlightAware and, in exchange, receive additional account features/privileges. , FlightAware's network consists of over 1,000 sites, predominately in Europe, North America, and Australia. FlightAware produces FlightFeeder, a small ADS-B receiver that receives and processes ADS-B data, then sends it to FlightAware over the Internet and also makes the data available locally. FlightAware provides this unit free of charge to individuals in areas where FlightAware's ADS-B network does not have sufficient coverage. The company deploys 75-100 new FlightFeeders per month. As of October 31, 2020, FlightAware has 24,350 ADS-B sites in 192 countries, an increase of 4,651 sites since October 22, 2018. In September 2016, Aireon and FlightAware announced a partnership to provide this global space-based ADS-B data to airlines for flight tracking of their fleets and, in response to

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (MH370/MAS370) was an international passenger flight operated by Malaysia Airlines that disappeared on 8 March 2014 while flying from Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia to its planned destinatio ...

, for compliance with the

ICAO The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO, ) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that coordinates the principles and techniques of international air navigation, and fosters the planning and development of international a ...

Global Aeronautical Distress and Safety System (GADSS) requirement for airlines to track their fleets.

APIs

AeroAPI

FlightAware has a query-based flight tracking API called AeroAPI (formerly FlightXML). Functionality includes flight status, airline data, maps, and push call-backs. AeroAPI can be accessed via Representational state transfer or Simple Object Access Protocol and the API can be accessed from any programming language that supports JSON or

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

, including Python,

Ruby A ruby is a pinkish red to blood-red colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum ( aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called ...

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

, Tcl,

Perl Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offic ...

, ASP, and other languages. Push notifications allow an app to be alerted about flight plans, schedule changes, departures, arrivals, cancellations, diversions, and more. AeroAPI users can also receive airline information such as gate assignments, gate times, seat information, aircraft tail number, and codeshare details.

Firehose

FlightAware has a live data feed called Firehose for third parties to incorporate live FlightAware positions around the world into their applications. Data is available as live snapshots or a streaming data feed.

Other

partnered with FlightAware and uses the FlightAware web application for ARINC Direct business aircraft operators.

Rockwell Collins Rockwell Collins was a multinational corporation headquartered in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, providing avionics and information technology systems and services to government agencies and aircraft manufacturers. It was formed when the Collins Radio Co ...

, and IBM's The Weather Company partnered with FlightAware to use FlightAware's worldwide data in their products for airlines.

References

External links

FlightAware live air traffic
{{DEFAULTSORT:Flightaware Companies established in 2005 Companies based in Houston Online companies of the United States American travel websites Aviation websites Internet properties established in 2005 IOS software Privately held companies based in Texas Android (operating system) software BlackBerry software Symbian software Windows Phone software Aerospace companies of the United States Flight tracking software