Historical Flight Data API — ADS-B
Replay
the whole sky.
Up to a year of archived ADS-B positions and flight history, sampled every 5 seconds - search the archive, replay any flight gate to gate, or pull traffic over any airport.
What you get
Every flight, on the record
Search months of archive, replay any flight's exact track, and study traffic over any airport - all from positions sampled every 5 seconds.
The exact flown track, position by position - sampled every 5 seconds.
Pass a flight_id, get back the whole track - auto-bounded takeoff to landing.
365-day archive
Archive coverage begins 1 May 2026 - windows grow over time
Ninety days, or a full year. The path prefix sets the window and the per-request caps — not the plan name on your account.
up to 5,000 positions · 1,000 flights per request
up to 10,000 positions · 2,000 flights per request
Available on PRO & BUSINESS plans.
90 days of history on PRO, a full year on BUSINESS - every flight sampled at 5-second resolution.
Archive coverage begins 1 May 2026
Search, replay, and analyze the archive
Six ways into the same history - by flight, by aircraft, or by airport, across 90 to 365 days.
Search archived flights
Query any date range and filter by callsign, registration, ICAO24, or departure and arrival airport. Each record returns a flight_id for follow-up lookups.
Replay full flight tracks
Fetch the complete ADS-B track for any flight_id - automatically bounded to the takeoff→landing window with ±5 minutes of padding.
Position history by hex or tail
Pull raw position snapshots for any aircraft by ICAO24 hex or registration - sampled every 5 seconds, newest-first, with a companion list of overlapping flight windows.
Airport traffic history
Reconstruct historical arrivals and departures for any ICAO airport over any window - filter by direction (departures, arrivals, or both) for movement analysis.
90 to 365 days of retention
Reach back 90 days on the PRO plan or a full year on BUSINESS. Single requests can span up to 365 days - no stitching together windows yourself.
Registration auto-resolve
Query by tail number and SkyLink resolves it server-side to the right ICAO24 - so you never have to map registrations to hex codes yourself.
Integration
Replay a flight in two calls
Search the archive to find a flight, then pass its flight_id to get the full track back - auto-bounded from takeoff to landing, sampled every 5 seconds.
import { SkyLink } from "skylink-api";
const sky = new SkyLink({ apiKey: process.env.SKYLINK_API_KEY });
// 1 · find the flight in the archive
const [flight] = await sky.history.flights({
registration: "G-XWBA",
start: "2026-05-12",
end: "2026-05-13",
});
// 2 · replay its full track by flight_id
const track = await sky.history.track(flight.flight_id);
console.log(track.positions.length, track.sampleSec);
// → 1287 5Track auto-bounded takeoff→landing · TypeScript types included
* Sample data for illustration only.
Positions
Positions by tail or hex
Pull raw position snapshots for any aircraft over any window - by registration or ICAO24 hex. Tail numbers are resolved server-side, so either identifier works.
Returned newest-first at 5-second resolution, with a companion list of the flight windows those positions fall inside. Perfect for EFB logs, dispatch review, and research pipelines.
Positions API Referenceskylink-api — TypeScript SDK · Python SDK
* Sample data for illustration only.
Search the archive, replay full tracks, pull positions by tail or hex, and study airport traffic - across 90 to 365 days.
Every flight on record
Search by date, callsign, registration, or airport - each row carries a flight_id for replay.
- takeoff_time
- string
- landing_time
- string
- count
- number
- positions[].timestamp
- string
- positions[].altitude_baro
- number
- positions[].ground_speed
- number
The full track between takeoff and landing, newest position first.
Full response referenceGate-to-gate, replayed
Takeoff to landing with every recorded position — timestamp, altitude, speed and track.
Build your query
Prefer fine-grained control?
Pick an endpoint - flight search, track, positions, or airport traffic - and shape the response.
Ready to dig into the archive?
Search, replay, positions, and airport traffic across 90 to 365 days - all behind one API key. Built for dispatch, EFBs, and research.