Planefinder Search Scraper

What does Planefinder Search Scraper do?

Planefinder Search Scraper searches Planefinder's mobile API by free-text query and returns matching flights, callsigns, airlines, airports, and aircraft. Each query can return multiple result types (e.g. a historic flight match and an airline match for the same term) — useful for resolving human-entered text into structured identifiers before feeding them into other tools.

Results are pushed directly to an Apify dataset. Use Apify's scheduling and integrations to automate lookups at any cadence.

Why use Planefinder Search Scraper?

• Identifier resolution — turn a free-text query (airline name, partial callsign, airport name) into structured flight/callsign/airline data.
• Autocomplete-style discovery — explore what Planefinder actually indexes for a given search term before building a more targeted scrape.
• Data pipelines — feed resolved callsign/flight_number/airline_code values into the Planefinder Flight Scraper or Airport Scraper.

How to use Planefinder Search Scraper

1. Open the Actor and click Try for free.
2. In the Input tab, enter one or more search queries.
3. Click Start and wait for the run to finish.
4. Download results from the Output tab in JSON, CSV, or Excel format.

Input

Field	Type	Description
queries	array	Free-text search terms, e.g. ["garuda", "CGK", "GA401"]
max_results	integer	Max results kept per query (default 25, max 200). Caps cost on broad queries.

{
    "queries": ["garuda"],
    "max_results": 25
}

Output

Each item represents one search result for one query. The fields present depend on the result type (Planefinder does not document a fixed schema per type).

{
    "query": "garuda",
    "score": 1,
    "type": "historicFlight",
    "callsign": "GARUDA",
    "firstSeen": 1772077200,
    "lastSeen": 1772079060,
    "flightId": "5-54350130",
    "airlineCode": "_IF"
}

Search also matches other entity types, e.g. type: "airport":

{
    "query": "CGK",
    "score": 2,
    "type": "airport",
    "name": "Soekarno Hatta Intl",
    "city": "Jakarta",
    "country": "Indonesia",
    "iata": "CGK",
    "icao": "WIII",
    "lat": -6.12557,
    "lon": 106.656
}

Data table

Field	Description
query	The search term used for this result
score	Match relevance score (higher = better match)
type	Result type as returned by Planefinder (e.g. historicFlight, airport)
callsign	ATC callsign, if type is a flight-related result
airlineCode	ICAO/internal airline code, if applicable
firstSeen / lastSeen	Unix timestamps bounding when this entry was observed, if applicable

Other fields (name, iata, icao, city, lat, lon, ...) appear when type is airport or another entity type — all fields returned by Planefinder are included as-is.

Tips

• Run multiple queries in one job — each result includes a query field so you can trace which input produced it.
• Combine with the Planefinder Flight Scraper: resolve a query to a callsign, then look up its full timeline.
• Lower max_results if you only need the top matches — results are already ranked by score.

Pricing

This Actor uses the Pay Per Event model: $0.03 per result in the dataset (plus a negligible one-time actor-start fee). Results are capped by max_results (default 25) so a single broad query costs at most ~$0.75 by default — raise the cap if you need the full result set.

FAQ and support

This Actor uses Planefinder's public mobile API for informational purposes only. Do not use the data for commercial redistribution without verifying Planefinder's terms of service.

For bugs or feature requests, open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab. Custom scraping solutions are available on request.