[FEATURE] Hybrid approach for routing data

[ColinWaddell]

What problem does this solve?

fr24 has really good routing data

What would you like to see?

better routing data. I'd like to use a heavily cached FR24 for route data and see what's possible within their official API/free-tier

[ToddInLB]

I agree on the hybrid approach probably being necessary, I am currently using the tar1090 setting as I have had an ADS-B receiver with an image from adsb.im running for a few years now. Currently it is working better than using the flightradar24 source, at least for the planes that it sees, the data for them is less than optimal (the source and destination airports are often very wrong).

I looked at the map running on my ADS-B receiver (http://adsb-feeder.local/map/ or http://adsb-feeder.local:8080/) and the route information the have in the table on the right and in the details for any plane you click on is actually pretty good. It may need some parsing if it has multiple items in the route list, usually this is just something like ORD-MKE-ORD....

I poked around a bit and from I can see the information comes from http://adsb.im/api/0/routeset I used wireshark to figure this out. Also in the http request header info both the referer and the origin are set to the address of my local receiver, so I don't think it could be used by anyone that isn't using an adsb.im image.

I don't know if this is of any help, but I wanted to pass along what I have found in the off chance it could be useful...

I also wanted to say thank you for all the effort you put into this project!!!

--Todd

[ColinWaddell]

For the next couple of days I'm going to run branch feature/hybrid-routing on my home box to see if it causes any issues

[cwlaytham]

I had brought this up as an issue (#64). I have switched to flight-tracker-rgb-pi, but if we are able to use our own tar1090 dump with better route data I'd switch back (prefer the quicker recognition of overhead flights and your more detail on non-commercial airline flights). Hoping your hybrid-routing works out.

As ToddInLB said, thanks for your effort on this.

[ColinWaddell]

Thanks for the kind remarks, it really helps get through the github tickets 🤠

So for the updated hybrid code is working OK but I do notice some funny business.

If the non FR24 provider has routing info right-or-wrong, it'll be displayed. If nothing is available then we use the FR24 fallback. Which is sweeping up a lot of missing flights but no use if the data is wrong.

I'm loath to make FR24 the higher-priority look-up as it's soooo slow and buggy compared with the other services just now. Perhaps a further pivot from the unofficial API to the official one, and force people to take out free-tier keys? Not sure, I think more testing is required unless someone can find a routing-info provider which competes with FR24 but without the price-tag.

[dom2114]

Is there a free tier for flight radar's api? I thought they all were paid.

While the FR24 api was down, I briefly looked into flight aware's areo api. Seems to have almost every data point I was after (except plan registration). It also has $5 of credit per month free, so I setup several free accounts to cycle requests through. Made some progress with it, but then you got FR24 working again. Could be something to explore?

Obviously echo all the positive comments above. This is the only git project ive be actively monitoring, tweaking, forking, testing. Thank you for all you do!

[cwlaytham]

As dom2114 says, FlightAware has $5 of credit free per month, $10 if you are feeding it data. The biggest use case for this hybrid approach would be for those of us with our own receiver, so most would get the $10 level. I've been using flight-tracker-rgb-pi for a couple of days and I've run up about $0.12-0.13 per day at FA (while also using Airlabs API); still would expect to stay under $10/month.

Also as dom2114 said, I saw no free tier for fr24's API, even with my elevated account for feeding them data.

[ColinWaddell]

Ok. This sounds like a sensible approach then.

I'm currently deep in rewriting a lot of thr animation engine stuff just now so I'm trying to not work on new features, just support requests and bug fixes. Once I'm through this dev work though I'll move onto getting us a proper hybrid approach for routing info.

[ColinWaddell]

v2.2.0 has just been released which uses FR24 as a fallback after trying everything else for route data. This seems to help fill some gaps.

I'll close this in a few days if it's mitigated the problem for a little while till a better API is plumbed in

[cwlaytham]

The concern I still see is that my issue with hexdb.io isn't incomplete information, but confidently incorrect information; I just tested the API with five random commercial flights showing up near me (US Kentucky) on my ADS-B, and of those, one was correct, two had route information that was completely incorrect and two weren't found (it seems older legacy airlines are more likely to have incorrect data, likely due to having longer history with ICAO numbers). So this subset would end up with only a 60% correct rate while using two calls to FR24. Maybe hexdb.io is better kept up to date in the U.K.? The update timestamp on the flights I checked were from 2019.

I may try to get a second SD card so I can switch back and forth from my current setup and test this, as I still like the graphics on yours better.

[ColinWaddell]

If you do find a better service it's pretty trivial now to tweak. Just look at route_lookup.py -- that's where the new code would live -- Colin colinwaddell.com <https://www.colinwaddell.com>

…

On Sat, 25 Jul 2026 at 16:34, cwlaytham ***@***.***> wrote: *cwlaytham* left a comment (ColinWaddell/FlightTracker#65) <#65 (comment)> The concern I still see is that my issue with hexdb.io isn't incomplete information, but confidently incorrect information; I just tested the API with five random commercial flights showing up near me (US Kentucky) on my ADS-B, and of those, one was correct, two had route information that was completely incorrect and two weren't found (it seems older legacy airlines are more likely to have incorrect data, likely due to having longer history with ICAO numbers). So this subset would end up with only a 60% correct rate while using two calls to FR24. Maybe hexdb.io is better kept up to date in the U.K.? The update timestamp on the flights I checked were from 2019. I may try to get a second SD card so I can switch back and forth from my current setup and test this, as I still like the graphics on yours better. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#65?email_source=notifications&email_token=AAODIBP3LSLCUN7TVMV37KT5GTHR5A5CNFSNUABFM5UWIORPF5TWS5BNNB2WEL2JONZXKZKDN5WW2ZLOOQXTKMBXHEYDOOBVG42KM4TFMFZW63VGMF2XI2DPOKSWK5TFNZ2KYZTPN52GK4S7MNWGSY3L#issuecomment-5079078574>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAODIBKQ732HWRJCCR36TRL5GTHR5AVCNFSNUABFKJSXA33TNF2G64TZHMZTSMBTGQZDSNRUHNEXG43VMU5TIOBYG4YDQMRYGE22C5QC> . Triage notifications, keep track of coding agent tasks and review pull requests on the go with GitHub Mobile for iOS <https://github.com/notifications/mobile/ios/AAODIBMLIMU55U72YFF3LJT5GTHR5A5CNFSNUABFM5UWIORPF5TWS5BNNB2WEL2JONZXKZKDN5WW2ZLOOQXTKMBXHEYDOOBVG42KM4TFMFZW63VGMF2XI2DPOKSWK5TFNZ2KUZTPN52GK4S7NFXXG> and Android <https://github.com/notifications/mobile/android/AAODIBOX2ZRIVA2YIY4BDGL5GTHR5A5CNFSNUABFM5UWIORPF5TWS5BNNB2WEL2JONZXKZKDN5WW2ZLOOQXTKMBXHEYDOOBVG42KM4TFMFZW63VGMF2XI2DPOKSWK5TFNZ2K4ZTPN52GK4S7MFXGI4TPNFSA>. Download it today! You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[Belligero]

Noticing a lot fewer question marks since the recent changes. Some flights still don't show the aircraft model which is fine, and the occasional one still comes through without route data, but nothing like it was before. Good example from my end is flights to and from Dubai are now showing full information.

Much better!

[ColinWaddell]

Awesome. Yeah the unknown model I’m seeing occasionally too. I think I’ll extend the hybrid code to cover the plane model too

[WeegeeNumbuh1]

I would also like to chime in and agree with supporting a hybrid approach with route data.

I remember when I was trying to pick out an API to use for my own project (FlightGazer) I just ended up using FA since it had better GA support and the ability to recognize FAA LID codes, plus the free alternatives were inconsistent with their data as @cwlaytham ran into.

From my experience, I believe FA could be used for non-commercial flights while the current APIs can handle the other flights, though the logic to check if a flight is GA vs commercial probably requires additional work.