Flight Tracker — Live Aircraft Position & Status for AI Agents

A real-time flight tracking tool built for AI agents, LLMs and RAG pipelines. Look up live aircraft position, altitude, speed, heading and on-ground status by flight number / callsign, region or airport — data that no LLM knows from its training set. Perfect as a tool-call / MCP grounding source for travel assistants, chatbots and agents.

Clean, small, structured output — ideal for feeding straight into an LLM context or an agent's tool response. Works from the Apify Console, on a schedule, or via API. Callable by Claude, ChatGPT, LangChain, CrewAI, LlamaIndex and any MCP client (every Apify actor is MCP-callable via mcp.apify.com).

✈️ Real-time grounding, not stale training data. "Where is flight DLH717 right now? How high, how fast, which direction?" — the actor answers with live telemetry an LLM can't produce on its own.

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🤖 Why this is an AI-agent tool

LLMs have a knowledge cutoff and no live data. AI agents close that gap with tool calls to real-time sources. Flight data is a textbook grounding case:

• ✅ Live, not memorised — current position, altitude and speed update every few seconds
• ✅ Small, structured payload — token-efficient, one clean record per aircraft
• ✅ Tool-shaped input — a flight number in, a structured answer out
• ✅ MCP-ready — call it from any agent framework or MCP client

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📋 What this actor does

Give it a flight, a region or an airport, and it returns:

• ✅ Live position — latitude / longitude (WGS84)
• ✅ Altitude — barometric and geometric (metres)
• ✅ Speed — ground speed in m/s and km/h
• ✅ Heading — true track in degrees
• ✅ Vertical rate — climb / descent
• ✅ On-ground status and transponder squawk
• ✅ Country of registration and ICAO24 address
• ✅ Airport departures / arrivals (with free OpenSky credentials)

Data comes from the OpenSky Network — a community-driven, real-time air-traffic data source.

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🚀 Quick start

1. Enter a flight number / callsign (e.g. DLH717, BA123, UAL456).
2. Or leave flights empty and pick a region for all live traffic.
3. Click Start and read the structured result from Storage → Dataset.

Note: aircraft only appear while airborne. If a flight isn't currently flying, it won't be in the live snapshot — use the region or airport modes to explore what's in the air now.

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⚙️ Input

Field	Type	Description
Flights / callsigns	array	Flight numbers or callsigns, e.g. DLH717, BA123. IATA (LH717) is auto-mapped to ICAO callsigns (DLH717).
Region	select	When flights is empty: all live aircraft in a region (Europe, North America, Asia, ... or Worldwide).
Airports	array	ICAO codes for departures/arrivals, e.g. EDDF, KJFK, EGLL. Requires OpenSky credentials.
Airport direction	select	Arrivals or departures.
OpenSky client ID / secret	string	Optional free OAuth2 credentials (opensky-network.org) — enables airport flights + higher rate limit.
Max results	integer	Cap on records. 0 = no limit.

Example 1 — Locate a specific flight

{ "flights": ["DLH717", "BA123"] }

Example 2 — All live aircraft over Europe

{ "flights": [], "region": "europe", "maxItems": 500 }

Example 3 — Arrivals at Frankfurt (with credentials)

{
  "airports": ["EDDF"],
  "airportDirection": "arrival",
  "openSkyClientId": "your-id",
  "openSkyClientSecret": "your-secret"
}

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📦 Output

{
  "callsign": "DLH717",
  "icao24": "3c5ef8",
  "matchedQuery": "DLH717",
  "originCountry": "Germany",
  "latitude": 47.3575,
  "longitude": 6.4513,
  "baroAltitudeM": 11277.6,
  "geoAltitudeM": 11582.4,
  "velocityMs": 251.5,
  "velocityKmh": 905,
  "headingDeg": 117.4,
  "verticalRateMs": 0,
  "onGround": false,
  "squawk": "1000",
  "lastContact": "2026-07-03T15:30:25.000Z",
  "source": "live-position",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-07-03T15:30:26.000Z"
}

Output fields

Field	Description
callsign / icao24	Aircraft callsign and unique ICAO24 address.
matchedQuery	The flight query this record matched.
originCountry	Country of registration.
latitude / longitude	Live position (WGS84).
baroAltitudeM / geoAltitudeM	Barometric / geometric altitude (m).
velocityMs / velocityKmh	Ground speed.
headingDeg	True track / heading (degrees).
verticalRateMs	Climb / descent rate (m/s).
onGround	True if on the ground.
squawk	Transponder code.
lastContact	Last position-update time.
departureAirport / arrivalAirport / firstSeen / lastSeen	Airport-mode fields.
source	live-position or airport-arrival/departure.

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💡 Use cases

Use case	How it helps
AI travel assistant	Ground answers about live flight position and status.
Agent tool / MCP	A callable real-time data source for any LLM agent.
RAG / chatbot	Inject live flight telemetry into an LLM context.
Dashboards & maps	Feed live positions into a map or ops dashboard.
Research & analytics	Sample live air traffic by region.

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🔌 AI & integrations

• MCP: every Apify actor is callable from mcp.apify.com — add this actor as a tool in Claude Desktop, VS Code, or any MCP client.
• Frameworks: LangChain (ApifyActorsTool), LlamaIndex, CrewAI, Vercel AI SDK, n8n.
• API: run and fetch results with the Apify API or JS / Python clients.
• Formats: JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML, XML.

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❓ FAQ

Do I need an API key? No — live positions (flights & region modes) work without any credentials. Airport departures/arrivals need free OpenSky OAuth2 credentials.

Why is my flight not found? Aircraft only appear while airborne. A flight that hasn't taken off (or has landed) won't be in the live snapshot.

How fresh is the data? Real-time — positions are updated every few seconds by the OpenSky Network.

Can an AI agent call this directly? Yes. It's designed as a tool-call source and is MCP-callable via Apify.

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⚖️ Legal & responsible use

This actor uses the OpenSky Network community air-traffic data via its public API. Respect OpenSky's terms and rate limits, and use the data for lawful purposes. For heavier use, add free OpenSky OAuth2 credentials.

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🛟 Support

Need an extra field or hit an issue? Open a ticket from the actor's Issues tab.

Happy tracking! ✈️