Through its AeroAPI utility, FlightAware expanded the functionality of the query-based flight tracking to offer customers access to historical flight data dating back to Jan. 1, 2011. FlightAware users can already retrieve on-demand real-time flight status updates, flight tracks, future flight schedules and other flight data specific to any airport, airline fleet, flight or tail number. The new program update allows them to access historical data to include flight status and times, flight tracks and static track images for any flight or tail number.
The historical data can be accessed by the flight identifier (including IATA/ICAO identifier), registration number or codeshare identifiers. At NBAA-BACE 2022 in Orlando, FlightAware explained that using proprietary algorithms based on years of experience, it fuses data from thousands of sources to provide a single source of “truth” that might be useful for operational decision-making and/or software developers exploring predictive flight patterns, for example. Over the years, FlightAware has collected data on more than 700 million flights.
Between Flight Aware and VasAviation, folks can get real time data after a mishap, with some amazing features that aid studying crashes with A/G, G/A and even CTAF transmissions, along with flight profile plan view traces and airspeed/altitude data. I’ll wager the NTSB investigations, when they publish the fact that they didn’t travel to the crash site, are performed with this data. Some of the video images from airport surveillance cameras will help immensely.