Overview

Aviation Information Data Exchange (AIDX) is the global XML messaging standard for exchanging flight data between airlines, airports, and any third party consuming operational data.

AIDX is endorsed as a standard by:

IATA Recommended Practice 1797A
ACI Recommended Practice 501A07
ATA Recommended Practice 30.201A

The AIDX API allows Airports and Airlines to publish flight information to SITA Flight Information service using the IATA AIDX specification.

More information about AIDX Standards can be found on the AIDX IATA Website.

AIDX Schema

The SITA AIDX API supports v21.2 schema.

Download v21.2 schema

AIDX Update Service

version 1.0.0-SNAPSHOT

Revision History

Date	Version	Description
`26 November 2021`	`1.0`	`Initial draft`
`11 August 2023`	`1.1`	`Added rate limit and OAuth`

Introduction

The SITA AIDX Service is a REST (XML) service which facilitates the publishing of flight information to the SITA Flight Status system using the AIDX specification.

The updated flight details can then be retrieved via the SITA Flight Status API.

2.1 Registration and API Sign Up

To access the APIs you will need a registration key, also known as an API key. These can be obtained by creating an account on https://www.developer.aero/ and registering your interest for access to the API.

2.2 Authentication

To access the APIs an OAuth access token must be supplied in an Authorization header in the request. To obtain an OAuth token a request must be sent to the https://sitaopen.api.aero/update/aidx/oauth/token endpoint using the OAuth2 Client Credential flow.Use your API key as the client_id, and your consumer secret as the client_secret these should be base64 encoded in an Authorization header when sent to the OAuth endpoint.

Please note the OAuth tokens have an expiry of one hour after the token has been retrieved, after the token has expired you will need to re-issue a request to get a new token.

curl --location 'https://sitaopen.api.aero/update/aidx/oauth/token' \--header 'Authorization: Basic YWJjZGVmZ2hpamtsbW5vcC5xcnN0dXY='

You should then see your OAuth token in the response.

"access_token": "eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOJIUzI1NiJ9.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.g_dFH-08DGADOX9HIk7wzX5edxXejVsnCen27A25TQ0'

Once an access token has been obtained, it can be placed in the Authorization HTTP header as a bearer token, for example:

curl --location 'https://update-flifo-qa.api.aero/update/aidx/flights/update' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/xml' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOJIUzI1NiJ9.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.g_dFH-08DGADOX9HIk7wzX5edxXejVsnCen27A25TQ0"
--data '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ns:IATA_AIDX_FlightLegNotifRQ xmlns="http://www.iata.org/IATA/2007/00" xmlns:ns="http://www.iata.org/IATA/2007/00" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" AltLangID="en-us" PrimaryLangID="en-us" Target="Test" Version="15.1" TimeStamp="2015-06-03T14:29:53.147Z" TransactionIdentifier="FLT:RTOR" SequenceNmbr="2072">
...
...
...
</ns:IATA_AIDX_FlightLegNotifRQ>

2.3 Security

All incoming requests will be REST over HTTPS.
Users are authenticated using their API key.
Each user api key will have a list of airports associated with it for which the user may submit flight creation/update/delete requests.

Error Response

Response fields

Path	Type	Description
`IATA_AIDX_FlightLegRS`	`Object`	Root element
`IATA_AIDX_FlightLegRS/Errors`	`Object`	Object that holds the error information
`IATA_AIDX_FlightLegRS/Errors/Error`	`Object`	Array of errors
`IATA_AIDX_FlightLegRS/Errors/Error/Code`	`String`	Error Code
`IATA_AIDX_FlightLegRS/Errors/Error/ShortText`	`String`	Error Description

HTTP response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/xml
Content-Length: 221

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<IATA_AIDX_FlightLegRS xmlns="http://www.iata.org/IATA/2007/00">
    <Errors>
        <Error ShortText="Service Exception" Code="1007"/>
    </Errors>
</IATA_AIDX_FlightLegRS>

2.5 Rate Limiting

All incoming requests are subject to a rate limiting restriction. The following headers are included in HTTP responses:

Header	Description
`X-RateLimit-Limit`	The total number of requests allowed in the current time window
`X-RateLimit-Remaining`	The number of requests left for the current time window
`X-RateLimit-Policy`	The policy describing how many request per time window are allowed
`X-RateLimit-Reset`	The number of seconds remaining in the current time window. Header not displayed after rate limit has been exceeded
`retry-after`	The epoch timestamp at which the current rate limit window resets. Header only displayed after rate limit has been exceeded