FlightView® XML Server

Query & Response Specification

FlightView Inc.
A wholly owned subsidiary of OAG
http://www.flightview.com

Copyright © 2001-2015 FlightView Inc.  All rights reserved.

Introduction

FlightViewXML3.0, developed by FlightView Inc., is an advanced flight following system that provides accurate, minute-by-minute flight information. FlightViewXML3.0 aggregates airline schedule and reservation flight information, airline and airport flight status data, and radar-based air traffic data to generate a database of accurate, up to the minute flight information for flights globally.

For a comprehensive description of this feed and how to use it, please contact your sales rep for the FVXML Integration Guide.

FlightView Server

The FlightViewXML3.0 Server allows you to make flight queries based on flight number or arrival and departure parameters and receive accurate and reliable information for that flight or group of flights. Queries to and responses from the Server are made via the Internet using http protocol.

Flight Query Format

Flight Queries can be made to the FlightViewXML3.0 Server via the HTTP protocol and a request method set to GET type. The basic query parameters are categorized into two groups: request parameters and response parameters. Request parameters specify how to find one or more flights and response parameters control the return of XML elements and data.

http://xml.flightview.com/fvCompanyName/fvXML.exe?’request parameters’&’response parameters’

FlightView Inc. will supply the CompanyName component of the URL. It may differ from the full company name.

An example query may look like:

http://xml.flightview.com/fvYourNameXML/fvXML.exe?depap=bos&arrap=phx&al=us&depdate=20120201&dateTimeType=Local&scheduleDateTime=On

This query is for Southwest flights from Boston to Phoenix, the response would give the date time information in local times (local to the airport) and also the schedule dates and times for the flights would be present in the xml response.

Request Parameters

Here are the Query request parameters used in FlightViewXML3.0.

ACID	Flight ID
DEPAP	Departure Airport
ARRAP	Arrival Airport
DEPDATE	Departure Date
ARRDATE	Arrival Date
DEPHR	Departure Hour
ARRHR	Arrival Hour
AL	Airline
SIMPLESTATUS	The simple status of a flight is defined as one of None ‘N’, Proposed ‘P’, Active ‘A’, and Landed ‘L’; if no value is provided then no filtering will be done based on simple status.
A	Authentication username
B	Authentication password

Here is a list of combinations of these request parameters that are recognized by the FlightViewXml3.0 server. Any combination not listed here, returns an error on the response page, saying "Incorrect usage of query arguments".

Please note that certain features of the feed are not standard options. Extra features will be noted as such. If you are interested in any of the extra features please contact your sales representative.

M - Mandatory, O - Optional, X - Excluded

Case	Description	ACID Exists	ACID includes AL	DEPAP	ARRAP	DEPDATE	DEPHR	ARRDATE	ARRHR	AL (as filter)	SIMPLESTATUS
1+	My flight all days	YES	YES	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	O
2	My flight all days	YES	NO	X	X	X	X	X	X	M	O
3+	My flight leg by city pair all days	YES	YES	M	M	X	X	X	X	X	O
4+	My flight leg by city pair all days	YES	NO	M	M	X	X	X	X	M	O
5	My flight departure day	YES	YES	X	X	M	X	X	X	X	O
6	My flight arrival day	YES	YES	X	X	X	X	M	X	X	O
7+	My flight departure day	YES	NO	X	X	M	X	X	X	M	O
8	My flight arrival day	YES	NO	X	X	X	X	M	X	M	O
9+	My flight leg from departure	YES	YES	M	X	O	X	X	X	X	O
10	My flight leg from departure	YES	NO	M	X	O	X	X	X	M	O
11	My flight leg from arrival	YES	YES	X	M	X	X	O	X	X	O
12	My flight leg from arrival	YES	NO	X	M	X	X	O	X	M	O
13	City pair from departure day	NO	-	M	M	M	O	X	X	O	O
14	City pair from arrival day	NO	-	M	M	X	X	M	O	O	O
15*	All flights from departure	NO	-	M	X	M	M	X	X	O	O
16*	All flights from arrival	NO	-	X	M	X	X	M	M	O	O
17*	Random flight data	"RANDOM"		O	X	X	O	X	X	O	O

* - Extra feature: Query case is not a standard feature - contact sales representative if interested.
+ - Extra feature: ACID may list multiple flights -or- contain wildcarding - contact Sales representative if interested.

Flight ID Format

Flight ID can be a combination of airline code and flight number or can be just the flight number. E.g.: ACID = AA1234 or ACID = 1234. Whenever ACID does not have the airline information in it, it is apparent from the chart above that AL is a must in such a case. Multiple ACIDs are listed as acid=aa1,aa2,aa3 and wildcarding may contain ‘*’ to match any string or ‘?’ to match any single character.

The airline/flight number is given in the following format, where (a) implies an optional alphanumeric charater and (n) implies an optional numeric character.

ACID = aa(a)n(n)(n)(n)

aa(a) alphanumeric two letter IATA airline abbreviation (as shown on airline tickets) or three letter FAA code.

n(n)(n)(n) - is 1 to 4 digit flight number (n is value 0 thru 9)

• When multiple ACIDs are listed each ACID must be well formatted and the ACIDs should be separated by a comma ‘,’
• * or ? may replace any of the alpha numeric characters if wildcarding is allowed
• may be set to "RANDOM" when looking for a random lists of flights if RANDOM feature is enabled

Departure and Arrival Date Formats

The departure and arrival date parameter names with their values are, respectively:

DEPDATE = yyyymmdd
ARRDATE = yyyymmdd

Where yyyy, mm, and dd specify the year, month and day digits respectively.

Departure and Arrival Airport Formats

The departure and arrival airports’ parameter names and value formats are, respectively:

DEPAP = aaa(a)
ARRAP = aaa(a)

Where aaa(a) is the three letter IATA airport code or four letter FAA code. FlightView uses IATA airports when they are available.

Departure Hour and Arrival Hour

The departure and arrival hours’ parameter names and value formats are:

DEPHR = hhmm
ARRHR = hhmm

Where hhmm is 24 hour time, local to the departure and arrival airports, respectively. These values range from 0000 to 2359.

Airline

The airline parameter name and value format is:

AL = aa(a)

Where aa(a) is the two letter IATA airline code or three letter FAA code. FlightView uses IATA codes for airlines when they are available.

SIMPLESTATUS

The status parameter name and value format is:

SIMPLESTATUS = c

Where c is a single character using ‘N’ for flights that have not yet filed a flight plan, ‘P’ for flights that have filed a flight plan, ‘A’ for flights that are in air, and ‘L’ for flights that have landed. These statuses do not correspond directly to the FlightStatus node’s children (Scheduled, Proposed, Delayed, OutGate, Active, InGate, Landed, NoTakeOffInfo, Unknown, and Cancelled.)

Authentication

It is possible to force authentication to prevent data theft or misuse. If you want to turn authentication on the username and password parameters should be securely stored and added to every query using the following format:

A = a(aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa)

Where a is the username provided by FlightView.

B = a(aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa)

Where a is the password provided by FlightView.

Please contact your FlightView sales representative if you need further help or need customization to meet your business needs.

Response Parameters

Here are the Query response parameters recognized by FlightViewXML3.0.

DateTimeType	How do I want the FlightViewXML3.0 to present dates and times in the response page?
ScheduleDateTime	Do I need schedule dates and times along with actual ones?
AviationType	Do I need general aviation, commercial aviation, or both?
NumberOfFlights	At most how many flights should be returned by this query?

DateTimeType

Values: LOCAL, UTC.
Default: LOCAL
Effect: If set to LOCAL, flight dates and times are in local time for each airport. If set to UTC, flight dates and times are in co-ordinated universal time.

ScheduleDateTime

Values: ON, OFF
Default: OFF
Effect: If set to ON, along with actual dates and times, the schedule dates and times are presented in the response.

AviationType

Values: GA, COM, BOTH
Default: BOTH
Effect: If set to GA no commercial aviation flights will be presented in response. If set to COM no general aviation data will be presented in response. Please note a customer who has not purchased general aviation data cannot access that data using this parameter, likewise for a customer who has not purchased commercial data.

NumberOfFlights

Values: any integer from 1 to 600.
Effect: Once this many matching flights are found the response will be returned. There is a hard cap on the number of flights that can be returned set at 600. If you would like to increase this number please contact your sales representative. For query cases 1 through 16 if this parameter is not submitted all matching flights will be returned, unless more than 600 flights match the query, in which case an overflow of records error will be returned. For query case 17 if this parameter is not submitted only the first flight found will be returned.

XML Response Format

The XML response first contains the http header:

"Content-type: text/xml\n\n"

Followed by:

"<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>\n"

Thereafter FlightView XML follows, first with a general header element and sub-elements regarding the query results status and after that with zero or more flight elements, which match the query.

Flight Status in Response

Scheduled	The flight exits in airline schedule data, but FlightView has not received data from the FAA for it
Proposed	A flight plan has been received for the flight from the FAA
OutGate	FlightView has received data indicating that the Flight has left the gate, but is not in air.
InAir	FlightView has received a wheels up message from the FAA (note departure notification is delayed 5 minutes in accordance with FAA regulations)
Landed	FlightView operations has determined this flight has touched down
InGate	FlightView has received notification that the flight has arrived at the gate.
Expected	FlightView has received information from a data source that the flight is expected to land at the arrival airport soon. Often the source is the arrival airport, but not necessarily. In most cases there is an estimated arrival time. (added in 3.0 release, contact sales rep for inclusion in your feed)
NoTakeOffInfo	The flight has missed its scheduled takeoff time by more than 15 minutes
Delayed	FlightView has received data indicating that the flight has been delayed
Cancelled	FlightView has received data indicating that the flight has been Cancelled or the flight has missed its scheduled takeoff time by more than 600 minutes
Unknown	The flight has been delayed for over an hour, but is not yet cancelled, or its status is otherwise unknown.
PastFlight	The operational time window for the flight has passed and FlightView did not receive data concerning its actual landing or arrival. (added in 3.0 release, contact sales rep for inclusion in your feed)

The following is a description of the standard usage of these nodes:

Typically a flight’s XML status will go from Scheduled to Proposed to OutGate to InAir or Expected to Landed to InGate. GA flights and non-scheduled commercial service will never have a status of Scheduled. When flights do not take off by their scheduled (or proposed if available) time, they will typically go to Delayed or NoTakeOffInfo, then to Unknown, and finally to Cancelled or PastFlight statuses.

The standard setup does not include InAir flights’ coordinates or route data or map URL. If you are interested in these extra features, please contact your sales representative.

Please see the FlightViewSchema for a full description of the XML format, note that some nodes are optional and that the order of nodes is not always static. Also see the examples for a multi-flight result and a single-flight result without the new version 3.0 flight status values and the example for a multi-flight result and a single-flight result with the new version 3.0 flight status values. Also, see the examples of an empty result, and an invalid-query result.