FLIGHTROUTEAPI · BUILD WITH OBSERVATIONS
Track your aircraft over WebSocket.
Subscribe by tail number, then receive your fleet’s latest available observations through one persistent connection.
How does the stream work?
Add registrations with PUT /v1/subscriptions/{tail}, then connect to wss://flightrouteapi.com/v1/ws/subscriptions using your X-API-Key header. Each snapshot contains your key’s fleet; additions and removals appear without reconnecting.
How often is aircraft data updated?
Snapshots are delivered every 10 seconds. This is delivery frequency, not a promise of new observations every 10 seconds. Inspect observed_at and stale on each aircraft. Coverage, collector queues and upstream availability affect freshness.
What does a message contain?
When available: aircraft registration, ICAO24, callsign, latitude, longitude, altitude, ground speed, heading and observation time. Missing observations remain missing; the service does not invent positions.
What are the limits?
The free key supports five aircraft and 1,000 requests per UTC day. Each snapshot after the first counts as a request. A continuous connection uses approximately 8,640 requests per day, plus REST calls. Plan stream limits apply; reconnect after one hour.
How do I connect from a browser?
Browser WebSocket clients cannot set arbitrary headers. Use a server-side client or a backend-for-frontend with a private key. The public demo connects to a restricted, fixed fleet without exposing private credentials.
Try it with real data.
Open the public demo → · Read API documentation → · Explore flight history → · Open the GNSS map →