Firehose Documentation Center

Revision History and Version

The non-latest versions of major releases are supported for up to 1 year after the date of release. Firehose is updated often and we recommend that customers always use the latest version for the best experience.

Version 29.0 (October 2023)

Added new surface message type (ground_position_unmatched) that contains surface positions where the hexid/ident of the vehicle is not known, and thus previously not accessible in Firehose. These unmatched positions will have an `ident` value in the form of Unknown-xxxx (Example: Unknown-1944). ground_position_unmatched messages are only available with v29.0.0 and beyond, and will not be included with firehose replay requests for dates prior to 2023-09-06.

Version 28.0 (August 2023)

Unified (ground and airborne) connections requesting near_surface_position events will now consistently receive the near_surface_position message for flight positions within 5000ft agl and 5 mile radius of a supported arrival/departure airport (rather than the more generic position message). This will enable users interested in surface traffic (and near-surface traffic) to readily differentiate between airborne positions in the proximity of an aerodrome and arrival/departure traffic for an airport.

Version 27.0 (May 2023)

Introduction of new Foresight prediction type: Arrival Runway Predictions. Provides the predicted runway identifiers along with respective probability of runway assignment (top 3) in the flifo message. Available to Foresight customers with additional account provisioning.

Version 26.0 (May 2022)

Add support in the layer field for 'polygon' and 'box' values. This affects the vehicle_position schema, near_surface_position schema, and ground_position schemas.

Version 25.0 (March 2022)

Adds support for predicted_taxi_out_duration in the flifo and extendedFlightInfo message types. This field is available for Foresight customers with additional account provisioning.

Version 24.0 (November 2021)

Allow "airborne" and "surface" data in a single connection for feeds after 11-11-2021.
Added "min_seconds_between_airborne" command to control airborne position rate limit in a combined connection. This command is backwards compatible and may be specified for connections with a version less than 24.
Added "min_seconds_between_surface" command to control surface position rate limit in a combined connection. This command is backwards compatible and may be specified for connections with a version less than 24.

Version 23.0 (December 2020)

Add new field (newId) to "cancellation" messages.

Version 22.0 (September 2020)

Add new "flifo" event / message type to replace "flightplan" and "extendedFlightInfo".
"flifo" messages contain two new fields:

Actual Departure Runway - The runway from which the plane departed
Actual Arrival Runway - The runway on which the plane landed

Version 21.0 (June 2020)

Add new fields (alt_gnss, vertRate, vertRate_geom) to "position" messages.

Version 20.0 (January 2020)

Add new surface message type (near_surface_position), and new airborne message types (surface_onblock, surface_offblock, poweron). (approved users only)

Version 19.0 (October 2019)

Add two new surface message types (location_entry, location_exit). (approved users only)
Modifies the existing ground_position and vehicle_position messages to replace the airport_location and airport_location_id fields with a new airport_locations field that is a JSON array of structures. (approved users only)

Version 18.0 (September 2019)

Rename computed_eta field in flightplan messages to predicted_on and remove computed_eta_source field. (approved users only)
Add predicted_off field to flightplan messages. (approved users only)
Add predicted_out/predicted_in fields to extendedFlightInfo messages. (approved users only)

Version 17.0 (August 2019)

Add polygon filtering support for firehose messages.

Version 16.0 (July 2019)

Add CSI information to position messages. (approved users only)

Version 15.0 (February 2019)

Add weather information to position and ground_position messages. (approved users only)

Version 14.0 (January 2019)

Add ADS-B integrity and accuracy category information (NIC/NAC/SIL) to position and ground_position messages. (approved users only)

Version 13.0 (October 2018)

If a user does not have access to any airborne data and doesn't specify an alternate event, an error is raised
The heading field is emitted only for air positions, ground positions, and wxstream data
Add additional fields (on_runway, layer, airport_location, airport_location_id) for vehicle and ground position messages

Version 12.0 (July 2018)

Add fmswx message type which contains weather and FMS extended information for a flight. (approved users only)

Version 11.0 (May 11, 2018)

Add extendedFlightInfo message type which contains block, gate, terminal, and baggage information for a flight. (approved users only)
Add Predicted ETA (computed_eta) fields to flightplan message. (approved users only)

Version 10.0 (April 5, 2018)

With deployment of this version, a significant backend rewrite has occurred providing significant replay speed improvements. Although best efforts have been made to ensure close backwards compatiblity when requesting older version numbers, there may be subtle, unavoidable server differences.
The opaque data format used by the "facility_hash" member has changed starting with version 10.0, making comparison of values retrieved from earlier versions incomparable. Applications that depend on comparing saved data that use the older format of this field are recommended to request version 9.0 or lower when connecting.
The "cancellation" message has a new optional "trueCancel" field when requesting version 10.0 or higher, indicating that confirmed flight cancellation was received from the airline, rather than a presumed cancellation due to expiration or lack of data.
When specifying an ending epoch timestamp with the "range" command, you will now receive all messages that match the final timestamp rather than just the first matching message.
Add fmswx message type which contains weather and FMS extended information for a flight. (The "filter" command may potentially match flights that have a non-US aircraft registration that happens to match the first 3 characters of the requested airline codes. users only)
Server improvements to obfuscated access to blocked flights allows users with that privilege to see more blocked flights than before.

Version 9.0 (August 9, 2017)

add support for near-airport ASDE-X radar airborne "position" message types (updateType = "X"), approved users only. These ASDE-X positions will also be remapped to and combined with updateType = "Z" in earlier versions when available.

Version 8.0 (February 13, 2017)

add surface movement support by adding new "ground_position" and "vehicle_position" message types (updateType = "X" or updateType = "A"), approved users only.
add support for receiving obfuscated data on blocked aircraft, approved users only.
add "keepalive" command to allow periodic heartbeat/progress messages to be transmitted, useful when requesting very specific filters that produce low-traffic volume.
(April 9, 2017) add "strict_unblocking" command to simplify requesting only aircraft belonging to a FlightAware Global account.
(July 27, 2017) add "ratelimit_secs_between" command to allow rate limiting of positions per aircraft.
(August 9, 2017) add support for space-based ADS-B airborne "position" message types (updateType = "S"), approved users only.

Version 7.0 (June 2016)

add "compression" command to allow streamed responses to use data compression, useful for lower-bandwidth connections.
add support for "onblock" and "offblock" events, approved users only.
add support for "positions" from MLAT sources (updateType = "M"), approved users only.
add support for datalink sources (updateType = "D"), approved users only.
fields with blank values will now be omitted.
flight "id" (faFlightID) field now omits the colon and fork identifier suffix.
add support for receiving data on blocked aircraft, for customers with FlightAware Global accounts.

Version 6.0 (February 2016)

add "pitr" element to all messages, for use with resuming via the "pitr" (point in time recovery) initiation command
add "fdt" (filed departure time) element to flightplan messages

Version 5.0 (August 2015)

add airport_filter command to match origin/destination
add support for multiple latlon boxes
make successful latlon matches trigger matching for further messages from that same flight_id
make expression matching use logical-OR when multiple are specified
add facility_hash/facility_name to JSON messages.
increase maximum initiation command length to 5120
add command aliases for "latlon vs latlong" and "filter vs airline_filter"

Version 4.0 - Adds hexid attribute
Version 3.0 - Adds squawk attribute
Version 2.0 - Lat/lon and waypoints are truncated to 5 digits of decimal precision
Version 1.0 - Initial release

Firehose Documentation Center

Revision History and Version

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