Flight Radar

This page exists as a landing page to support the Flight Radar WordPress plugin. You may find additional information on our blog by searching the flight radar tag.

Flightradar24 is a flight tracking service that provides the web with real-time location information on thousands of commercial and recreational aircraft. Flight Radar receives its data primarily by ADSB and FAA radar , but their database is supplemented by data supplied by an army of volunteers that upload ADSB data (from their own receivers) to Flight Radar's servers.

The process of including a map embedded within an iframe on your own website, WordPress or otherwise, is exceedingly simple. The following URL is used:

<iframe src="http://www.flightradar24.com/simple_index.php?lat=49.9&lon=12.3&z=8" width="100%" height="100%"></iframe>

Simple.

Why Create a Plugin?

We created a plugin only to simplify the (already simply) process of embedding a plot. The iframe URL that embeds the plot requires knowledge of a location's latitude and longitude - something that'd scare many people away. Add to that the complexity of altering other options and we quickly justified a little work. Of course, we have bigger plans that'll see us integrate other types of information from other data providers, so this is really just a start.

How to Use the Flight Radar WordPress Plugin

Usage is easy. Once downloaded and activated, the means in which you'll get a plot embedded within your post or page is as follows:

Note that either the IATA code of SYD or the ICAO code of YSSY can be used. When the shortcode is processed, a request is made to our Flight Airports API . XML data is returned and the latitude and longitude for the requested location is stored locally so no further requests are made to our API for that specific location.

The resulting default rendering looks like this:

You'll note a significant amount of branding on the embedded data; this is unavoidable. In fact, using the FlightRadar24 service requires that you provide attribution back to their website .

Available Shortcode Options

Available shortcode attributes are as follows:

code : 3-letter IATA or 4-letter ICAO airport code.
lat : Latitude (if known)
lng : Longitude (if known)
zoom : Zoom level, Defaults to 8.
width : Width of the rendered plot. Defaults to 100% of your post/page container.
height : Height of the rendered plot. Defaults to 350 pixels.
align : Alignment of the plot. Defaults to 'center'.

For example, you could alter the plot size and zoom level with the shortcode of:

Flight Airports API

Available in XML, JSON and text, the Airports API will return various details relating to an airport - including the latitude and longitude required for the FlightRadar24 URL.

[img caption="XML Data Returned for Sydney, Australia (Basic Version Only)" link="0" width="500"]4707[/img]

Endpoint: http://api.flight.org/airports/xml/syd/airport.xml - "syd" is replaced with any ICAO or IATA airport code. View the XML data here .

It's always best to make a request using an ICAO code rather than the limiting IATA data. IATA data is more relevant to ports that accommodate RPT and therefore agent ticketing services... meaning that they represent only a small percentage of available ports.

If you know the latitude and longitude for an airport, no request is (initially) made to the API. Remember, a request to the API is made only the first time you query a particular airport; data is then stored locally for future retrieval.

Access to the API

Usage of the API via third part applications is via permission only. A few people have created plugins (in fact, one has copied our entire code) so we've made provisions to determine where the request came from. If it's determined that the request came from unauthorized use we'll often block it.

Download

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