3scale interviews David White about Flightstats APIs

Interview with David White, FlightStats Chief Customer Officer. In this role, David works with key customers, content providers, and channel partners, and insures all are properly represented in product and development plans.


Introduction

APIs are a key infrastructure component for online businesses – powering mobile applications, partnership programs and innovation. Increasingly, as many businesses become more software driven, having a well-managed API available to customers and partners is becoming key to success in the marketplace. That is why FlightStats chose 3scale as its API platform enabling FlightStats to securely open, control, manage, operate and monetize APIs to 3rd parties (e.g. developers, business partners, etc).

APIs have been a core part of our business since 2003. We’ve built FlightStats around providing day-of-travel data and services to the travel industry. APIs are the primary delivery mechanism. - David White 

Q.  Tell us more about FlightStats APIs

A. FlightStats aggregates data from many sources to provide the most complete global coverage of commercial airline flight information. With FlightStats® Flex APIs you slice and dice the data the way you want. The APIs are powerful, precise and concise. They are designed for ease of use with REST, supporting JSON, JSONP, XML formats as well as SOAP. FlightStats® Flex APIs can receive replies to their API requests in English, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, German, and French.

Read the complete interview.
 

Monetizing Mobile Applications

Michael Jurewitz posted an excellent series on app store economics and strategies for making money from mobile applications on his blog at http://jury.me/blog/2013/3/31/understanding-app-store-pricing-part-1

The five-part series covers everything from price elasticity to analysis on the kinds of apps for which people will pay good money.  If you want to generate more income from your mobile efforts, be sure to read Michael's posts.

You can find them here.

• Understanding App Store Pricing — Part 1
• Understanding App Store Pricing — Part 2
• Understanding App Store Pricing — Part 3
• Understanding App Store Pricing — Part 4
• Understanding App Store Pricing — Part 5 Pricing Kaleidoscope

When is a Cancelled Flight Not a Cancelled Flight

The term "cancelled" has a certain finality about it.  If the lead singer in a band loses her voice, the show is cancelled.  Once a check has been cashed, the bank cancels it so it can never be used again.  When a visa is cancelled, it's worthless and will never get you into the issuing country.

When a flight is cancelled, it's final, right? Not necessarily.  A cancelled flight can be reinstated if the airline can solve the problem that caused the cancellation - put together a crew or substitute new equipment for a plane with mechanical issues.  This doesn't happen often.  But it does happen  more often than you might think, especially during irregular operations due to weather or system-wide issues.

The worst case scenario for passengers is that they will see the flight status marked cancelled or receive a cancellation alert, not go to the airport, then find out later that the flight actually did depart without them.  Policies vary airline to airline.  But a passenger's rights are usually severely restricted in that event. They may be considered a no-show.  So when you display fight status information in your app or website or use our system to send alerts, make sure that you encourage passengers on cancelled flights to either go to the airport anyway or, at the very least, contact the airline to find out what they should do next.

Open Source Ruby Client for FlightStats Flex APIs

Pierre Meyer, founder of DidItClear.com, was kind enough to share a Ruby on Rails client for our Flex APIs.  The client is posted on Github and can be used under the MIT open source license.  It should be a real time-saver for Ruby developers. You can review and download the code at:

https://github.com/diditclear/flightstats-client-ruby

Thanks to Pierre for contributing this to the FlightStats Developer Community. Check out his new venture, a website that aims to collect statistical data for all things flying related at:

https://www.diditclear.com/

French and Spanish Now Added to APIs

FlightStats has added French and Spanish to its language repertoire. The new Flex APIs can now deliver query results in any of six languages using the "extended options" feature - English, German, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, French and Spanish.

FlightStats® Flex APIs deliver translated flight status responses and flight schedules data, along with airport names, countries, cities, and street addresses. Developers will be able to specify the language they prefer by simply appending a optional parameter to the query and will receive the translated response in their choice of XML or JSON.

Learn more on the Extended Options page

Mobile-app platform Meridian uses FlightStats data in their powerful way-finding airport apps

Meridian is a mobile-software company that helps businesses within a busy location create apps that engage with their visitors. Popular retail outlets, hotels, hospitals, subways, airports, and museums use the Meridian Editor software to build and maintain mobile apps that take advantage of GPS and other location-aware technologies. 

The challenge:
People in airports are always trying to navigate in a hurry and are met with the challenge of figuring out the lay of the land.

Airports have a brief window of time to provide a really positive experience for the traveler, and in that time, they also need to maximize the revenue opportunity for the businesses within the airport.

A typical scenario:
Typically on-the-go travelers are hastily scanning airports' electronic displays, hurriedly searching for their gate numbers, or are wandering the halls in confusion seeking amenities such as the nearest bathroom, food venue, or lounge, en-route to their gate. Travelers are often left feeling confused, rushed, and unsatisfied since they were not equipped with the information necessary to optimize the experience.

The solution:
Meridian offered app-building software to airports such as Portland International Airport (PDX) and the Sydney International Airport (SYD). With Meridian’s software, the airports built apps filled with helpful resources such as airport amenity information including: stores, restaurants, and food venues. The apps they built though are much more than just interactive maps. For example, the app built by PDX gives the traveler quick access to highly relevant trip information via the data powered by FlightStats including: flight status, delay, airport, and gate data. 

"Airports are complex places that see many harried travelers with only a few minutes to find the right dining option or gift,” said Jeff Hardison, vice president of Meridian.. Therefore, airports want to create their own mobile apps that support traveling passengers while maximizing revenue from a traveler's brief visit in their airport. To give travelers a sense of just how much time they have to spend in the airport, incorporating FlightStats real-time data is crucial. Thankfully, FlightStats makes the integration process easy.”

See a little demo of how Meridian's app for the Portland International Airport works.

 
The Meridian-Powered App for the Portland Intl. Airport from Meridian on Vimeo.

FlightStats at upcoming Digital Signage Expo

Want to discuss what is new with FlightStats FIDS and other digital signage content solutions? FlightStats' Derrek Wright will be at the Digital Signage Expo on February 26th through the 28th in Las Vegas. To set up a time to chat with him please email him at derrek(at)flightstats.com.