✈️ Aviation & Live Flight Tracking MCP Server

Give your AI agent eyes in the sky. Track live aircraft anywhere on Earth, look up any flight by its transponder address, find every plane an airline has airborne right now, and summarize the traffic over a city or airport — live from the adsb.lol community ADS-B network, through the Model Context Protocol.

Built by NexGenData. Connect once and your agent can answer "what's flying over me," monitor a fleet, or build situational-awareness dashboards on demand.

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⚡ What you get

Tool	What it does	Data source
flights_near	All live aircraft within a radius of a point	adsb.lol
track_aircraft	Live position of one aircraft by ICAO24	adsb.lol
search_by_callsign	Find live flights by airline / callsign prefix	adsb.lol
airspace_summary	Traffic summary for a region (airborne, on-ground, types)	adsb.lol

Each aircraft record includes callsign, ICAO24 hex, registration, aircraft type, position, baro/geo altitude, ground speed, heading, vertical rate, and squawk.

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🎯 Use cases

• "What's flying over me?" — real-time aircraft for any lat/lon point + radius.
• Fleet / tail monitoring — track a specific aircraft by its ICAO24 address.
• Airline ops awareness — list every flight an airline (e.g. UAL, DLH, FDX) has airborne.
• Airport / region situational awareness — summarize traffic density and origins.
• Travel & logistics agents — enrich itineraries with live position context.

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🚀 How to connect

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "aviation": {
      "url": "https://nexgendata--aviation-flight-tracking-mcp-server.apify.actor/mcp",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" }
    }
  }
}

Get a free Apify token at apify.com.

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📊 Sample inputs

flights_near(lat=47.0, lon=8.0, radius_nm=50, max_results=25)
track_aircraft(icao24="4b1815")
search_by_callsign(callsign="UAL", max_results=10)
airspace_summary(lat=40.7, lon=-74.0, radius_nm=100)

📦 Sample output (flights_near)

{
  "center": { "lat": 47.0, "lon": 8.0 },
  "radius_nm": 50,
  "total_in_range": 41,
  "aircraft": [
    {
      "icao24": "400afd",
      "callsign": "EFW65TM",
      "registration": "G-EUXE",
      "aircraft_type": "A321",
      "latitude": 47.18,
      "longitude": 7.62,
      "baro_altitude_ft": 34000,
      "ground_speed_kt": 392.3,
      "true_track_deg": 308.27
    }
  ],
  "source": "adsb.lol"
}

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🧠 How it works

A standby MCP server that holds a live session and answers tool calls against the adsb.lol public REST API. adsb.lol aggregates ADS-B/Mode-S data from a global volunteer receiver network. No data-source API key required; results are normalized into clean, agent-friendly JSON.

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🔗 Related NexGenData Actors

• FAA Aircraft Registry Scraper
• FAA Airworthiness Directives & Aviation Safety
• Travel MCP Server
• Weather MCP Server
• Google Maps MCP Server

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💵 Pricing

Pay-per-event: a small fee per successful tool call plus a one-time actor-start. No subscription. See the live pricing tab for current rates. Run your automations on Apify.

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⚖️ Legal

Flight data is sourced from the adsb.lol community network and reflects publicly broadcast ADS-B/Mode-S transponder signals. Coverage depends on the volunteer receiver network and is not guaranteed complete. Not for navigation, safety-of-life, or air-traffic-control use. Respect adsb.lol's terms of use.

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❓ FAQ

Q: Is the data live? Yes — each call returns the latest adsb.lol snapshot.

Q: What's an ICAO24? A unique 24-bit hex transponder address per aircraft (e.g. 4b1815).

Q: Why is a plane missing? It may be on the ground, out of receiver coverage, or not broadcasting ADS-B.

Q: Do I need an adsb.lol account? No — only your Apify token. adsb.lol is keyless and free.

Q: Can I search a whole airline? Yes — search_by_callsign matches the airline's callsign prefix.

Q: How many aircraft per call? Up to 100 for flights_near; tune with max_results.

Q: Works with Claude / Cursor / Windsurf? Yes — any MCP client over streamable-HTTP.

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🛠️ Troubleshooting

• Empty result → widen the radius or check that aircraft are airborne there.
• track_aircraft returns nothing → the tail isn't transmitting right now; try a busy airspace.
• Callsign returns nothing → that flight may not be airborne right now; try the airline-code prefix.
• Rate limited → adsb.lol throttles heavy bursts; wait and retry.
• Idle disconnect → the server closes idle sessions to save compute; reconnect.

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🏢 About NexGenData

NexGenData builds production MCP servers and data actors for AI agents across finance, legal, regulatory, IP, government, aviation, and travel. See the full catalog on Apify.