FlightStats API
FlightStats Flex APIs are publicly documented: about 13 services from flight status to weather, over REST and SOAP. A free 30-day evaluation tier is self-serve, but Premium APIs require a sales contract. Onboarding is mid-migration to developer.cirium.com.
Frequently asked questions
FlightStats scores D+ on the API Report Card. FlightStats Flex APIs are publicly documented: about 13 services from flight status to weather, over REST and SOAP. A free 30-day evaluation tier is self-serve, but Premium APIs require a sales contract. Onboarding is mid-migration to developer.cirium.com.
Without a usable official API, teams fall back on manual exports, file drops, or one-off vendor integrations. The other option is an unofficial API layer like Supergood that automates the authenticated web app directly.
FlightStats is the developer brand and API portal for Cirium, the aviation analytics business owned by RELX (parent of LexisNexis and Elsevier).
Primary vertical: Fleet / Trucking / Logistics, specifically the aviation/travel data layer. A corporate travel platform polls the FlightStats Flight Status & Track API on every booked itinerary in the 24-hour window around departure, refreshing every 1-5 minutes, to surface gate, terminal, delay, cancellation, and diversion state in the traveler's mobile app and to fire push notifications when status changes.
High inside aviation, travel distribution, and enterprise airline ops; lower among indie developers post-2024. FlightStats was the consumer flight-tracking incumbent of the late 2000s and 2010s before Cirium (RELX) consolidated the brand.
FlightStats / Cirium Flex APIs sit in the operational path of any travel, hospitality, or aviation-adjacent system that depends on accurate flight status, schedules, on-time performance, or delay/cancellation events.
FlightStats was founded in 2002 in Portland, Oregon as a flight-tracking data service, acquired by Conducive Technology, and then rolled into RELX's aviation portfolio.
Grades measure one thing: can a customer's engineering team get their own data out programmatically? We check six things (whether a real API exists, how access is gated, data coverage, auth quality, docs and developer experience, and stability) and roll them into a letter grade. Grades get re-verified, and they only move on evidence.