Building an application for the airline industry cannot be imagined without access to information about airports worldwide. There was a time when developers had to start from scratch and maintain their databases to build applications and services for the travel industry. Today, businesses are witnessing the rising trend of using external APIs instead of rebuilding everything from scratch.
One such API is the Airport Info API which contains a comprehensive database of all the airports worldwide. In addition, the API includes detailed information about any given airport, such as full name, website, IATA, and ICAO codes.
It’s a must-have API for the developers aiming to build tracking applications. Because it also provides geolocation data, such as latitude and longitude information about the airports.
The API requires an understanding of airport codes as it uses both ICAO and IATA codes to locate an airport. Below is the quick rundown of these codes in case you haven’t used them yet.
- IATA (International Air Transport Association) airport codes are three-letter codes, which are also used to identify an airport uniquely. They are much more accessible and used in airline tickets, luggage tags, travel itineraries, etc. For instance, LAX is the IATA code for Los Angeles International Airport.
- ICAO(International Civil Aviation Organization) focuses on global synchronization of civil aviation regulations and has assigned international airports with four-digit codes, often called ICAO codes. They are primarily used for ‘official’ purposes and cover more airports, including many smaller airports. KJFK is the ICAO code for the John F. Kennedy International Airport.
What is Airport Info API?
Airport Info API is a Restful API that allows users to access information about any airport using its IATA and ICAO codes. The API returns valuable information about any given airport, such as below:
- IATA and ICAO code
- Name
- Location
- Street
- City
- Country
- State
- Country_ISO
- Postal Code
- Phone
- Latitude
- Longitude
- UCT
- Website
Unlike its competitors, this API allows users to search for an airport using either IATA or ICOA API, ensuring maximum coverage of all the airports across the world.
How does the Airport Info API work?
The API follows the Rest principles and provides a single endpoint that can be executed over HTTPS using the language and platform of your choice.
The client issues a GET request to fetch the detail about any given airport by providing either IATA or ICAO code as parameters. The API server then responds with the details as JSON formatted string as illustrated in the below diagram.
Target Audience
Travel Agencies
Airport Info API can be consumed by developers aiming to build applications for travel agencies. It eliminates the need to maintain an up-to-date database about airports across the world.
Online Flight Booking Application
Online flight booking apps can also integrate Airport Info API to show quick and accurate airport information.
Flight Tracker Applications
Airport Info API provides geolocation data about the airports, which can help Flight tracker applications plot the airport locations on a live map.
Aviation Professionals
Aviation professionals can also use Airport Info API to reference airport data using IATA or ICAO code quickly.
Airport Websites Directory
Airport website directories and search engines can integrate Airport Info API to list popular airports and their official websites. This way, they can facilitate their customers to find out more information about the airport, such as flight information, parking availability, and taxi wait times.
How to Connect to Airport Info API Tutorial – Step by Step
RapidAPI makes it super easy to connect to Airport Info API using a variety of SDKs. Below is the step-by-step tutorial.
Step 1: Signup on RapidAPI
If you don’t have an account on RapidAPI, you can create an account by visiting this URL. You can also signup using Google, Github, or Facebook logins.
Step2: Search the API Marketplace
Once registration is completed, you will be redirected to the dashboard.
Navigate to “API Marketplace” and search for “Airport Info API” (as shown in the below image):
Step 3 – Test the API
The final step is to test the API. To do this, Navigate to the ‘Endpoints’ tab and select the available endpoint ‘Airport’.
You may then choose the Code-snippet for your favorite programming language. The RapidAPI console will generate the necessary code required to execute the endpoint. You would notice that the API Key has been generated automatically by the RapidAPI console. T
Finally, to execute this endpoint, provide an IATA or ICAO code and click on the ‘Test Endpoint’ button to view the API response.
We provided the ‘LAX’ IATA code, and the API successfully returned the response, containing details about Los Angeles International Airport.
Note: In case of any failure, the Airport Info API may return one of the following responses:
- 400 Bad Request – Client sent an invalid request (missing required parameters).
- 401 Unauthorized – Failed to authenticate with the API server.
- 403 Forbidden – The client authenticated but didn’t have permission to access the required resource.
- 404 Not Found – The requested resource (endpoint) doesn’t exist.
- 500 Internal Server Error – A generic error occurred on the API server.
- 503 Service Unavailable – The API service is not available.
If you didn’t provide an IATA or ICAO code, the API would return the following error in JSON response.
In case of invalid IATA or ICAO code, the API returns the following error message.
Explanation of Airport Info API Endpoints
1. Airport
This endpoint retrieves airport information using IATA or ICAO code. It returns the data as JSON Formatted text.
It has two optional parameters
- IATA (three-digit airport code, such as LAX, JFK).
- ICAO (four-digit airport code such as KLAX, KJFK).
In the below example, we executed the endpoint for John F Kennedy Airport using its ICAO code – KJKF. As a result, the API has successfully returned the requested information.
How to Use Airport Info API with Python
Please make sure that you have installed the Python application. The Code snippet can be generated using several client libraries available for python like http.client, Unirest, and the default http.client.
The below example uses the ‘Airport’’ endpoint using http.client library to fetch the information about KJFK airport.
import http.client conn = http.client.HTTPSConnection("airport-info.p.rapidapi.com") headers = { 'x-rapidapi-key': "ce19d0164fmsh3d383efc0e85ce5p16dcb1jsnb1a4a3c79541", 'x-rapidapi-host': "airport-info.p.rapidapi.com" } conn.request("GET", "/airport?icao=KJFK", headers=headers) res = conn.getresponse() data = res.read() print(data.decode("utf-8"))
How to Use Airport Info API with PHP
Before running the sample code shared below, please make sure that you have installed PHP. Then, you may follow this guide on how to install this correctly.
The sample code also executes the ‘Airport’’ endpoint. However, it uses both ICAO and IATA codes for JFK Airport. The code snippet is generated using the cURL library.
<?php $curl = curl_init(); curl_setopt_array($curl, [ CURLOPT_URL => "https://airport-info.p.rapidapi.com/airport?icao=KJFK&iata=JFK", CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true, CURLOPT_ENCODING => "", CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 30, CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION => CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => "GET", CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [ "x-rapidapi-host: airport-info.p.rapidapi.com", "x-rapidapi-key: ce19d0164fmsh3d383efc0e85ce5p16dcb1jsnb1a4a3c79541" ], ]); $response = curl_exec($curl); $err = curl_error($curl); curl_close($curl); if ($err) { echo "cURL Error #:" . $err; } else { echo $response; }
How to Use Airport Info API with Ruby
The below code snippet illustrate how to consume the Airport Info API using Ruby.
require 'uri' require 'net/http' require 'openssl' url = URI("https://airport-info.p.rapidapi.com/airport?icao=KJFK&iata=JFK") http = Net::HTTP.new(url.host, url.port) http.use_ssl = true http.verify_mode = OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_NONE request = Net::HTTP::Get.new(url) request["x-rapidapi-key"] = 'ce19d0164fmsh3d383efc0e85ce5p16dcb1jsnb1a4a3c79541' request["x-rapidapi-host"] = 'airport-info.p.rapidapi.com' response = http.request(request) puts response.read_body
How to Use Airport Info API with Javascript
Please make sure that you have set up the JavaScript environment. Then, you can download text editors such as Atoms, Visual Studio Code, NotePad++, etc.
The following code snippet illustrates how to invoke Airport endpoint using both IATA and ICAO codes using the fetch method.
fetch("https://airport-info.p.rapidapi.com/airport?icao=KJFK&iata=JFK", { "method": "GET", "headers": { "x-rapidapi-key": "ce19d0164fmsh3d383efc0e85ce5p16dcb1jsnb1a4a3c79541", "x-rapidapi-host": "airport-info.p.rapidapi.com" } }) .then(response => { console.log(response); }) .catch(err => { console.error(err); });
Benefits
Speed:
Airport Info API can provide the results in just 170 milliseconds, making it ideal to be used in high performant applications.
Cost-effective
The API is completely free and can save you from spending a lot of time and money to build a similar functionality on your own
Geolocation
One of the prominent features of Airport Info API is its ability to provide accurate geolocation data, which can be consumed by various applications that involve plotting location markers on live maps.
Search Engine Friendly
The API is search engine friendly. It allows search bots and web-scrappers to find more information using the official website of any given airport.
Seamless Integration:
The API is highly flexible and can be seamlessly integrated with various platforms as it follows the REST API standards.
Alternatives to Airports Info API
Following are the similar APIs available on RapidAPI if you are looking for alternatives:
- AeroDatabox API: This API provides flight data for small travel or aviation application. Such as flight status, airports, runways, aircraft information, and more.
- AirportIX API: It’s another powerful API that allows users to fetch information about airports, airlines, planes, routes, etc.
- World Airports: This is a paid API that can find the list of airports matching the search string using airport name, code, or location.
- World IATA Airports API: This is a freemium API that can only find airport lists and their details using IATA code.
Summary
This article explored Airport Info API in detail. It explained how this API could be integrated using various languages such as Python, PHP, Ruby, and JavaScript. It also highlighted its target audience, endpoints, and benefits.
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