Tracks and overflights

A track is an aircraft’s path point by point, on one day: position, altitude and speed, with the same key and limits as the rest of the API. For the flights, that is departure and arrival airport, times and duration, see the flight history.

# the dates with a track
curl -H "X-Api-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.flyitalyadsb.com/v2/history/4ca7b5
# one day's track
curl -H "X-Api-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.flyitalyadsb.com/v2/history/4ca7b5/2026-09-15

How far back you can read tracks depends on the plan: Free the last 7 days, Starter 30, Pro 90, Fleet the whole archive since 2022 (limits table). Further back the answer is 403 with code tracks-depth, and the list of dates has only the ones the plan can read.

• /history/{icao} answers {"icao", "count", "dates": ["2026-08-17", …]}.
• /history/{icao}/{date} returns that day’s track in readsb’s trace_full format: icao, timestamp and trace, a list of points. Each point has the seconds after timestamp, latitude, longitude, altitude (feet or "ground"), speed and track, plus further fields described in readsb’s documentation.
• The X-History-Source header is local (recent days) or r2 (archive); for today, live (the track readsb is writing, updated as the aircraft flies) or store (an aircraft readsb no longer receives: position, altitude and callsign only, the other fields are null). The first request for an archived day can take a little longer.
• ?since={unix seconds} returns only the points after that time, today included: to follow an aircraft during the day without reading the whole track again (how).

Coverage

Period	Content
10/04/2022 – 04/10/2023	only the first and last point of each flight
25/07/2023 – 27/06/2024	full tracks, with gaps (206 days)
since 17/08/2026	full tracks, every day

There are no tracks from 28/06/2024 to 16/08/2026. The missing days are listed in the historical archive.

What flew over a place

/overflights lists the aircraft whose track passed within dist km of a point between from and to:

Overflights start from Starter: up to 10 km and 6 hours per request on Starter, 50 km and 24 hours on Pro and Fleet. On Free the answer is 403 with code plan-feature.

curl -H "X-Api-Key: YOUR_KEY" "https://api.flyitalyadsb.com/v2/overflights?lat=45.4642&lon=9.19&dist=3&from=2026-10-21T08:00:00Z&to=2026-10-21T10:00:00Z"

• One entry per aircraft, sorted by closest_time. Each entry has:
  • icao, r, t, dbFlags and the callsigns seen;
  • closest_time and closest_km;
  • min_alt_ft: the lowest altitude in the circle, in feet or "ground";
  • source: adsb, mlat, tisb or other;
  • positions: the positions received inside the circle. 0 means the pass is a straight line between two positions just outside it.
• from and to take ISO 8601 (UTC when there is no offset) or Unix seconds. max_alt_ft keeps only the low part of each track, limit caps the list (default 100, max 500).
• Coverage: every day since 17/08/2026, today included up to about 10 minutes ago. For the last few minutes and what is flying now, use /v2/lat/…. The periods that were not searched are in coverage.gaps: there, “no aircraft” doesn’t mean nothing flew over.
• Limits: radius and window depend on the plan: Starter 10 km and 6 hours, Pro and Fleet 50 km and 24 hours; Free does not include overflights. Above them the answer is 403. Every search counts as one request, with at most 10 searches a minute per key.
• Truncated answers: when there are more passes than fit, truncated is true. complete_until says up to when the list is complete; ask again with from set to it for the rest.
• It is about aircraft, not people: no field says who was on board.

Not available

• No search by area over long periods: /overflights covers at most 24 hours and 50 km per request, and only since 17/08/2026. For larger extracts or research projects, write to [email protected].
• No raw data: the Mode-S/ADS-B messages as they come from the receivers are not distributed, only decoded data.
• The data is CC BY-SA 4.0: credit FlyItalyADSB, and derived works go under the same licence.