Flighty API: there isn’t one
Flighty is a consumer app, and a very good one. It has no public API, no developer program and no webhooks; its help centre has no developer section at all. If you came here wanting Flighty’s alerts inside your own product, you need the data underneath them. FlightByte sends the alerts Flighty shows as signed webhooks to your server: gate changes, delays, departures, landings and baggage belts.
What you find when you search for it
Two things come up, and neither is an API you can build on.
Flighty itself
Its help centre covers imports, Live Activities, Where’s My Plane, delay predictions and subscriptions. There is no page on an API, developers, webhooks or exporting data to another system.
An unofficial MCP server
flighty-mcp, an open-source project on GitHub, reads the Flighty Mac app’s local SQLite database. An AI assistant gets your own flights on your own Mac. Nothing in it can serve your users.
Where Flighty's data comes from
A commercial feed underneath, and the change detection and push built on top.
In April 2021 FlightAware’s blog named Flighty as a customer of Firehose, FlightAware’s streaming flight data feed, and credited it for Flighty’s alert speed and its Where’s My Plane alerts. FlightAware licenses Firehose at a fixed price rather than per query, which suits an app at Flighty’s scale and few side projects. Flighty may have added sources since; it does not publish a list.
What matters for a developer is the shape of it. An app like Flighty sits on a flight data feed, works out what changed, and decides who to tell. FlightByte is that middle layer as a service: the data, the change detection and the delivery, priced per flight you watch. If you want the raw feed and per-query pricing instead, see FlightByte vs FlightAware AeroAPI.
The alerts, rebuilt from webhooks
What a Flighty-style app tells its users, and the FlightByte event behind each one.
| In a Flighty-style app | FlightByte | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Gate change | departure.gate.changed, arrival.gate.changed | With the old and the new gate. |
| Terminal change | departure.terminal.changed, arrival.terminal.changed | |
| Delay | delay.increased, delay.decreased | delayThresholdMinutes keeps a two-minute drift from becoming a push. |
| Departed, landed, at the gate | flight.departed, flight.arrived, status.phase | landed and arrived are kept apart. |
| Baggage belt | arrival.baggage.changed | Usually set once the aircraft reaches the gate. |
| Cancelled or diverted | flight.cancelled, flight.diverted, flight.reinstated | |
| Live Activity, lock screen | The same webhook, through ActivityKit | Push fan-out guide |
| Add a trip from a booking email | A lookup, then a subscription | Booking email guide |
| Where's My Plane | Not offered | equipment.tailNumber is in the snapshot; inbound-flight tracking is not. |
| Delay prediction | Not offered | Only what the airline publishes, as soon as it publishes it. |
| Live map | Not offered | No position data. Use an ADS-B source for the map. |
What a Flighty-style app costs
You pay per flight you watch, not per user. A thousand users on one aircraft is one watch.
- 1,000 users, 300 distinct flights a month
- 300 watches
- Starter covers 500
- $19 / month
- 10,000 users, 1,800 distinct flights a month
- 1,800 watches
- Growth covers 2,000
- $49 / month
Lookups for the trip screen are cached and included. You can start on the free plan with 3 flights a month. The full grid is on the pricing page, and Flight status API for travel apps walks through the import, the fan-out and what to filter.
When Flighty is the answer
When the flights are yours, not your users’.
If all you want is to follow your own flights, or your family’s, you do not need an API. Flighty Pro does that well, for about $60 a year on the App Store. An API is for when the alerts have to come from your product: your app, your brand, your users’ bookings.
Questions people ask about a Flighty API
Does Flighty have an API?
Where does Flighty get its flight data?
Is the Flighty MCP server official?
How do I build Flighty-style push notifications?
departure.gate.changed with the old and new gate; you turn it into a push, and the same event can update an iOS Live Activity. The guide on push fan-out has the tables, the receiver and the copy.Flighty or FlightAware for a developer?
Send your first gate-change push tonight.
Three flights a month free, a hundred for nine dollars. The alerts, signed and retried; the app is yours.
A free key in a minute, no card. Paid plans are paid by card in the dashboard.