Firehose Documentation Center

Purpose

Firehose is a FlightAware API for receiving streaming flight positions (e.g., Radar, ADS-B, Mode S multilateration (MLAT), datalink, etc) as well as flight status data (e.g., flight plans, departure/arrival messages, flight updates) and surface movement positions. This page defines a protocol for establishing a connection and receiving data from the Firehose interface.
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If you have questions please check our frequently asked questions to see if your topic has already been answered there before contacting your account representative for support. 

Subscription Layers

Your subscription may consist of any combination of the following data layers:

1. FlightAware Terrestrial ADS-B Positions: Worldwide
2. Aireon℠ Space-Based ADS-B Positions: Worldwide
3. FlightAware Terrestrial MLAT Positions: Worldwide
4. FlightAware ANSP Radar, Transoceanic and Estimated Positions: Worldwide (Transoceanic/Datalink/Estimated positions only), USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Central America (Radar)
5. FLIFO (Flight Status): Worldwide (flifo, departure, arrival, and cancellation messages)
6. Extended Flight Info (ExtendedFLIFO): Worldwide (extends flifo messages with additional gate times and gate/terminal locations)
7. Surface Positions: Most major USA airports (ASDE-X and ADS-B), Worldwide (ADS-B only)
8. Aircraft Weather Reports and Telemetry
9. Autopilot and GPS Accuracy
10. Obfuscated visibility of Blocked Flights
11. FlightAware Foresight™ Runway Arrival (ON)
12. FlightAware Foresight™ Gate Arrival (IN)
13. Ready To Taxi: (power_on, surface_onblock, surface_offblock messages)
14. Surface Entry and Exit Events

Please ask a FlightAware representative if you would like access to additional data layers. Firehose pricing is based on a monthly rate for unlimited use, dependent on what data layers you choose to access and the scope of how you repurpose/redistribute the data within your application.
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Firehose can also be used in conjunction with FlightAware Global for added satellite uplinks and EUROCONTROL data. Other aircraft operator's data can be integrated as well: read about Improving Tracking of Your Flights on FlightAware.
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*Australia radar and ADS-B is only available for internal consumption (e.g., not for redistribution to third parties beyond yourself).

Data Format

A data delivered by Firehose is in the JSON Lines format. This means that:

• All messages are in UTF-8 encoding.
• Each message is a valid JSON value.
• Each message is separated by a newline.

Data Coverage

For more information on FlightAware's position data coverage, please see FlightAware's coverage map.