/opensky/states

POST /api/opensky/states

Price: 1 credit

Get the current live state vector(s) for one or more aircraft by ICAO 24-bit address

How to use it

Get the current live state vector for one or more aircraft by their ICAO 24-bit transponder address (lowercase hex, e.g. '3c6444'). Returns, per aircraft: callsign, country of registration, last position and contact timestamps, longitude/latitude, barometric and geometric altitude, on-ground flag, ground velocity, true track (heading), vertical rate, transponder squawk code, special-purpose indicator, and position source. Set 'extended' to also include the aircraft category. Pass multiple icao24 values to fetch several aircraft at once. Use the 'states/search' endpoint to find aircraft by geographic area.

Parameters

• access-token string required

Request body

• timeout integer — Max scrapping execution timeout (in seconds) (default: 300; min: 20; max: 1500)
• icao24 array required — One or more aircraft ICAO 24-bit transponder addresses (lowercase hex) (examples: ["3c6444"], ["3c6444","4b1814"]; minItems: 1)
• extended boolean — Include the aircraft category for each state vector (default: false)

Response

• @type string (default: "OpenskyState")
• icao24 string required
• callsign string nullable
• origin_country string nullable
• time_position integer nullable
• last_contact integer nullable
• longitude number nullable
• latitude number nullable
• baro_altitude number nullable
• on_ground boolean nullable
• velocity number nullable
• true_track number nullable
• vertical_rate number nullable
• geo_altitude number nullable
• squawk string nullable
• spi boolean nullable
• position_source integer nullable (one of: 0, 1, 2, 3)
• category integer nullable (one of: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)

Errors

• 422 — The request body did not validate Check the fields against this schema. A URN with the wrong prefix is the most common cause.
• 408 — The request ran past its time limit Raise `timeout` in the request body, up to the maximum this endpoint documents. Lowering `count` or turning off the `with_*` flags also helps, because less work finishes sooner.
• 412 — No live state vector found for the given aircraft Retrying will not help: either the entity does not exist, or the input points at a different one.
• 429 — Too many requests: a rate limit or a usage window is exhausted When the response carries an X-Retry-After header, wait that many seconds and retry: the same number is in the body as `detail.retry_after`, and the limit clears once that window passes. The message in the body names the limit that was hit.
• 500 — Something broke on our side Retrying will not help. If it keeps happening, send us the X-Request-ID from the response headers.
• 529 — Rate limit reached, or the endpoint is overloaded Wait at least 30 seconds, then retry.

Response headers

• X-Error — Error message text (present only on error)
• X-Request-ID — Unique request identifier
• X-Execution-Time — Execution time in seconds
• X-Result-Count — How many records the body carries. 0 means an empty result, which is a normal answer and not by itself an error. A non-zero count can come back together with X-Error when the failure happened partway through — read this header and X-Error independently.
• X-Total-Available-Results — How many records exist for this query, when the endpoint can say. On a `dry_run` request this is the answer and the body is empty. It saturates: the endpoint's documented maximum means 'at least that many', any smaller number is exact.
• X-Warning — Present when the request body carried keys this endpoint does not document. They were ignored, so any filter you meant to apply through them did not apply. Check the spelling against this schema and retry.
• X-Retry-After — Seconds to wait before retrying. Present only on 429.