Flightstats APIs: Global Coverage of Commercial Airline Flight Info

APIs have been a core part of our business since 2003. We’ve built FlightStats around providing day-of-travel data and services to the travel industry. APIs are the primary delivery mechanism.

Interview with David White, who joined FlightStats in 2007 and serves as the Chief Customer Officer. In this role, David works with key customers, content providers, and channel partners, and insures all are properly represented in product and development plans.

Tell us more about FlightStats APIs
FlightStats aggregates data from many sources to provide the most complete global coverage of commercial airline flight information. With FlightStats® Flex APIs you slice and dice the data the way you want. The APIs are powerful, precise and concise. They are designed for ease of use with REST, supporting JSON, JSONP, XML formats as well as SOAP. FlightStats® Flex APIs can receive replies to their API requests in English, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, and German.

What API(s) does FlightStats offer today?
FlightStats offers the following APIs :

• Flight Status & Track

• Schedules/Connections

• Airports

• Alerts

• Delay Index

• Ratings

• Weather

When did FlightStats realize that it needed an API?
APIs have been a core part of our business since 2003.  We’ve built FlightStats around providing day-of-travel data and services to the travel industry.  APIs are the primary delivery mechanism.

What recommendations and tips would you give to a company planning to launch an API?
There are many things to think about.  I find it useful to think about APIs as a class of user experience.  They are a projection of your brand into the developer world.  So you need to really optimize the way in which developers interact with you from the on-boarding and documentation to support, stability, reliability, and business model.

Why and how are you using 3scale API Management Platform today?
We launched a second generation of air-travel related APIs on the 3scale Platform late last spring. We had built our own platform for our first generation. It was time to look and see what 3rd-party platforms could do for us. Our new developer center and our new FlightStats™ Flex APIs are managed and distributed on 3scale.

What benefits have you seen/are you expecting from your API program?
We do >10 million API transactions each day and the growth rate has been about 40% per year over the last five years. Our API program generates the recurring revenue that keeps FlightStats, Inc. healthy and viable for the long-term.

What is your vision for your API?
Our APIs are the means by which FlightStats data and services are becoming ubiquitous. We want to realize the goal of delivering flight and airport data to travelers in every country via every medium through which they require it.

FlightStats is a leading provider of day-of-travel data services and applications to the travel industry and traveling public. The company delivers real-time global flight tracking and airport data services that power many of the world’s most popular travel applications.