Data overview

Cirium offers a wide range of APIs surfacing a rich collection of different data sets.

Flight Status
Fleets
NOTAMs
Weather
Aeronautical Data
Schedules
Flight Positions
Waivers



Flight status

Cirium tracks over 35 million flights a year, covering over 97% of all global commercial flights. Our flight status offerings include information on departure and arrival airports, scheduled and actual gate and runway times, delays and cancelations and more.

We aggregate data from thousands of different data sources and present the most complete flight information in the industry. We surface flight status information in a variety of Request/Response, data feed, and push formats.

What platform should I use?

Flight positions

We collect information from ADS-B transponders, the FAA, and other sources to provide the planned and actual routes that flights take from destination to arrival. This information can be surfaced on maps to track flights en-route, or provide historical data for study on how to improve efficiency. We surface positional information in a variety of Request/Response and data feeds.

What platform should I use?

  • For operational applications or applications that are spatial in nature, use the Laminar Data Hub APIs where status, positional, and flight planning information are combined into a single flight object
  • Use Laminar Data Hub APIs for situationally-aware applications that want to take into account Regulations, restrictions, NOTAMs, and SIGMETS
  • Use FlightStats APIs for traveler-facing applications

Schedules

Cirium is one of two major industry providers of Flight Schedule information. Our schedule and route data goes back more than 40 years and looks forward 11 months in the future. The data set includes over 90 million online and interline connecting covering route information on 360,000 airport pairs worldwide.

What platform should I use?

  • For schedule information combined with Flight Status information, all three platforms have combined the information and can deliver it
  • Use FlightStats Schedules APIs if you want a request/response delivery of upcoming flight information for direct flights
  • Use FlightStats Connections APIs if you want request/response delivery of upcoming flight information for flights involving connections
  • Please contact us for daily, weekly or monthly drops of all the schedule information
  • Please contact us for historical schedule information

NOTAMs

A Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) is a notice filed with an aviation authority to alert all personnel concerned with flight operations of abnormal situations that could affect the safety of flights in a geographical area.

There are many different types of NOTAMs in the aviation industry, all of which are difficult to decipher. Some are mandatory or regulatory in nature, while others advise pilots and other airspace operators, such as drone operators, of a closed airspace or runway, obstacles. Some NOTAMs even alert airports and airlines about a nearby flock of birds.

What platform should I use?

Waivers

If there is a travel disruption such as a labor strike, natural disaster, or extreme weather, airlines might issue waivers that typically waive the fare rules on qualifying tickets issued so no change fees, additional collections, or penalties for refunds are charged in times of major disruption.

Matching waivers to qualified trips for proactive re-accommodation or refunds has typically been a labor-intensive manual process. Our Waiver Services alerts agents or travelers about a qualifying waiver.

What platform should I use?

Weather

Weather can have a serious impact on the operation of flights and thus is an important data set in aviation. We collect and offer several different types of weather:

  • METAR. A METAR (Meteorological Aerodrome Report) reports on the current observed weather condition at an airport or aerodrome. They typically report on current temperature, wind speed, and visibility information
  • TAF. A TAF (Terminal Aerodrome Forecast) provides a detailed forecast for weather conditions at the airport, generally covering a 9- to 12-hour window (sometimes greater)
  • SIGMET. A SIGMET (Significant Meteorological Information) contains information about serious weather or sky conditions that impact the safety of flights in the area
  • Zone Forecast. Zone forecasts (available only for US airports) are the traditional 5-7 day weather forecast for the area surrounding an airport

What platform should I use?

Aeronautical

Our aeronautical information is a foundational dataset used extensively throughout the aviation industry. Our APIs unlock the value in this global data and make it more accessible to the next generation of applications and systems. Data on global airspaces, airports, en-route airways, waypoints, navaids and FIRs is enhanced, filtered and made available in formats such as AIXM and GeoJSON. This information can be surfaced in situational awareness applications and on maps.

In addition, we collect information about traffic regulations and restrictions. Regulations provide information on the available capacity of the European air traffic management network. Restrictions are currently only available in France.

What platform should I use?

Fleets

We maintain the world’s largest independent set of data on aircraft and the companies that operate and manage them. Detailed information is provided for an aircraft such as aircraft registration, aircraft type and variant, engine type and variant, reported flight hours and flight cycles, technical specifications, interior configuration by cabin class and more. This information powers our Fleet Analyzer and Values Analyzer products but is also available by API.

What platform should I use?

Reference

We expose a set of reference data to support our APIs. Airlines, airports or aerodromes, equipment, and ICAO prefixes are examples of data that supports the other APIs.

What platform should I use?

Flight ratings

When travelers are shopping for flights, price is not the only factor. The on-time performance of a flight is important for the traveler to feel they will reliably reach their destination on time and their flight won’t be canceled. Cirium Flight Ratings analyzes the recent past performance of a given flight in comparison to other flights on the same route. The score produced by the ratings process accounts for both on-time percentage and degree of lateness.

What platform should I use?

Airport delay

Major delays at a departure or connecting airport can disrupt a traveler’s journey. Even if the departure airport or connect airport is running smoothly at the moment, disruption at other airports can ripple through the system and make for a horrible day.

We monitor every airport in the world and routinely calculate a measure of the level of departure delays a specified airport is currently experiencing. A low index (0-1) indicates that departures are running relatively smoothly. A higher index (4-5) is indicative of significant delays and flight operations disruptions. This information is available through Cirium APIs and can help paint a picture of disruption at an airport or within a country.

What platform should I use?

  • Airport Delay is available using the FlightStats Delay Index APIs expose METAR and TAF reports. As these are usually used in combination with other flight APIs, we generally recommend using the same platform. When used in combination with Trips and Waiver data, we recommend using the FlightStats APIs
  • Laminar publishes weather information in IWXXM, which is a standard format for reporting information in XML/GML. If using in spatially aware or operational applications, Laminar is the recommended choice
  • SIGMETs are only available via Laminar, and Zone Forecasts are only available in the FlightStats APIs