Dispatch API Release History

July 2022

• TripID and Tags
  TripID and Tags are available to send in the body of the Upload Scheduled Flights, Create Flight, and Update Flight requests. TripID supports a single string per flight and may be used as the identifier that groups flights/legs together. Tags support multiple strings and help you visually identify, filter, and search for flights. The TripID, when provided, will be displayed on the Dispatch flights list. When the TripID is not available, the first Tag is displayed. The TripID and all Tags are viewable in a modal; searching the Dispatch flights list for anyone will filter the list appropriately.
• Dispatcher Notes
  Dispatcher Notes are available to send with the Upload Scheduled Flights and Create/Update Flight operations. The notes are limited to 5,000 characters, available in the ATC Data tab in Dispatch, and available to the assigned crew via the Navlog and the body of the flight release email.
• Aircraft Cruise Profile Order
  The List Aircrafts response now orders cruise profiles such that each aircraft’s default cruise profile is listed first and then by speed descending.

April 2022

• Automatic Weight & Balance Loading
  With the introduction of ForeFlight’s Integrated Weight & Balance, flights created using Upload Scheduled Flights or Create Flight, and that include crew, load, or passenger details will pre-populate into the default Weight & Balance profile for the aircraft. The API will prefer Custom Weight values over Average Weight values and will use standard weights configured in Dispatch Settings where crew or passengers are supplied without corresponding weight values.

June 2021

• Auto Routing
  Dispatch's automation capabilities take another step forward with the new Auto Route Settings section in the Automation Settings tab. When enabled, Dispatch will automatically assign an optimized route to new flights that do not yet have a route. An additional setting allows account administrators to define how many hours prior to ETD a route should be generated and assigned to a given flight plan. Users can enable this feature to enhance the accuracy of their ETEs and fuel burn, which your integration may be retrieving via Get Flight or Get Performance. The Calculate Performance operation will continue to assume direct routing.
• Copy API Key
  For ease of integration activation, a copy button was added next to generated API keys in the ForeFlight Dispatch API Console to ensure that the entire string is copied to the user’s clipboard without any extraneous white space.
• Flight Updates
  As a reminder, no updates to a flight are allowed via API request for filed flights for all operations or after a user has manually edited or attached files to the flight if you are using the Scheduled Flights endpoint. Keep an eye out for errors and warnings in the API responses, especially those such as “Cannot modify filed flight [flightId] via API” from Update Flight and “Flight is under Dispatch control” from Scheduled Flights. Making these responses transparent to users when they are making updates from your system may help prevent end user confusion about the status of the flight data sync.

December 2020

• API Request History
  We are storing recent API requests made for each API key and exposing those requests to ForeFlight users in the Dispatch API Console.  This should help users keep track of which API keys they are actively using as well as help us better troubleshoot issues.  Your requests will show up with the Vendor Name associated with your x-vendorId header value to help customers with multiple integrations troubleshoot issues.
• Destination FBO Details
  Details about the flight’s selected Destination FBO can be retrieved using Get Flights.
• Flight Logging
  Fuel at shutdown is now available to set and retrieve along with OOOI times using Create/Update/Get Flight. Pilots may set these values on editable flight releases in ForeFlight Mobile, which will make them available via subsequent API request. Use List Modified Flights to look for updated flights and populate these values in other applications.
• Callsign character limit
  The callsign field is now limited to 7 characters and requests attempting to pass a longer string will return an error. This field overwrites the aircraft registration to serve as the aircraft identification in the filed flight plan.

November 2020

• Type of Flight
  You can set atcTypeofFlight in both Scheduled Flights and Create/Update Flight using values “S” (Scheduled), “N” (Non-scheduled), “M” (Military), “G” (General Aviation), and “X” (Other). 
• Rate Limiting
  We will be limiting the frequency of API requests in a way that should not disrupt any existing integrations and will have some flexibility based on your integration’s use of a VendorID in request headers.​

October 2020

• API Request History
  We are storing recent API requests made for each API key and exposing those requests to ForeFlight users in the Dispatch API Console. This should help users keep track of which API keys they are actively using as well as help us better troubleshoot issues. API requests from integrated systems will show up with the Vendor Name associated with each vendor's x-vendorId header value. Contact us if you need a VendorID.
• Flight Logging
  Fuel at shutdown is now available to set and retrieve along with OOOI times using Create/Update/Get Flight. Pilots may set these values on editable flight releases in ForeFlight Mobile, which will make them available via subsequent API request. Use List Modified Flights to look for updated flights and populate these values in other applications.
• Destination FBO Details
  Details about the flight’s selected Destination FBO can be retrieved using Get Flights.
• Release Status​
  A new [releaseStatus] object is now available in the response to Get Flight. Released flights can be updated by Update Flight requests if the flight is not yet filed and will be synced to the user’s mobile device. Editable flight releases can also be edited by ForeFlight Mobile users and changes made there will be synced back to Dispatch in real time.

September 2020

• Callsign Character Limit
  The callsign field is limited to 7 characters and requests attempting to pass a longer string will return an error. This field overwrites the aircraft registration to serve as the aircraft identification in the filed flight plan.
• Unmatched Crew in Scheduled Flights
  Your API requests using the Scheduled Flights operation previously prevented flights from being generated in ForeFlight when crew details were included and did not match a user’s email address in ForeFlight. You would have seen 400 errors such as "Crew member [Email address] not found". Now, those flights will be created and the crew stations will be populated with unmatched email addresses that are passed in the request. You will also receive a warning response indicating "No foreflight account found for [Email address], attaching as Ad-hoc". The user can then login to ForeFlight and choose a new crew/user account if necessary or create the appropriate user account. It may be appropriate for an administrator to update a user’s email address in one or both applications to ensure parity. A subsequent flight release using an unmatched email address will send a release notification to the email address, but will not send the flight to the user’s ForeFlight Mobile account. You can check for available crew ahead of flight creation by requesting Get Crew. Unmatched crew selection is also allowed via Create/Update Flight.
• Specific Weights
  ​New [passenger] and [customWeight] objects have been added to Flights and Scheduled Flights to allow you to manipulate weights based on the number of male, female, child, and infant passengers. The method of sending weights based on an average weight across all passengers will remain available.
• List Modified Flights Dates​
  You can now use a date range of up to 31 days in the List Modified Flights parameters. Selecting dates outside of the available range will return an appropriate error.
• Departure/Destination FIR
  The Departure and Destination airport FIR identifiers are available in the response to List Modified Flights as [departureAirportDetails] and [destinationAirportDetails].
• Updates After Filing​
  ​If you are using the CRUD Flight operations, you will not be able to update flights after they have been filed in ForeFlight and will receive a “Cannot modify filed flight” error upon attempting to do so. Users will still be able to update and properly amend or cancel filed flights within ForeFlight.
• Integrations Webpage
  We’ve released a new public webpage calling user attention to live scheduling integrations. As your integration is released or feature-set or logo changes, please remember to keep us updated so that we can keep interested customers in the know. 
• User Airports
  We have introduced a new Airport API with create/list/delete operations that allows you to create custom user airports for use in departure and destination airport fields in Flight requests. Account administrators have the option of managing these airports in their Dispatch settings.
• OOOI Flight Times
  Out, Off, On, and In times and their corresponding Flight and Block hours are now available as a part of Create, Update, and Get Flights requests. Note that your Release Flight API requests and/or users' manual flight releases must be ‘editable’ in order for crew to manually populate these fields in ForeFlight Mobile.
• Scheduled Flights Enhancements
  The ScheduledFlights API makes it easy to push flights from your system to ours. We've added the ability to indicate the number of passengers on a flight as well as the average passenger weight. You may also now set the type of flight (General Aviation, Non-scheduled, Scheduled, Military, or Other).

August 2020

• Updates After Filing
  ​If you are using the CRUD Flight operations, you will not be able to update flights after they have been filed in ForeFlight and will receive a “Cannot modify filed flight” error upon attempting to do so. Users will still be able to update and properly amend or cancel filed flights within ForeFlight.
• Enhanced Flight Lists
  The responses for List (Modified) Flights now contains additional fields such as ETA, ETE, ATC status, and recall number.

July 2020

• Base URL Update
  Earlier this year, we moved our API from dispatch.foreflight.com to public-api.foreflight.com. What follows has not changed (e.g. dispatch.foreflight.com/public/api/schedule/flights operates the same as public-api.foreflight.com/public/api/schedule/flights). If you have not updated your integration yet, please do so at your earliest convenience.
• Three-character Airport Codes
  We have added better support for airports with three-character FAA codes without proper ICAO codes.  ForeFlight allows you to pass these airport codes (e.g. T82) without error, but some applications require airport codes to be 4 characters in length.  If your application sends us KT82, we will now be able to validate that as T82.
• Flights Deep Links​
  You may be aware that you can push users into the ForeFlight Dispatch web application by providing them with a link to https://dispatch.foreflight.com/flight/[OrgID]/[FlightID]/edit, where [OrgID] is the result of [organisationUUID] returned by Get API Key Info and [FlightID] is the ForeFlight FlightID returned by the Flights and Scheduled Flights APIs. New in the ForeFlight Mobile iOS application is the ability to push a user into the same flight using foreflightmobile://flights/view?id=[FlightID].

May 2020

• Flight Attachments
  An exciting new capability enables you to add attachments to individual flight records using Files In Flight.  ForeFlight users will be able to readily open and view these attachments from the web and the iPad application.  You can already consume our briefing and navlog documents via the Flights API.  
• Weather Information
  There is a new Weather element in performance information returned by Get Flight, Calculate Performance, and other requests that will include average wind and temperature for the planned route. You can specify whether you want forecast, fixed, or historical Wind Options in Create Flight and Calculate Performance to have better visibility into and control over how the performance of the flight is being calculated.
• Flight Rules
  Flights sent via the Scheduled Flights API are assumed to be IFR but can be manipulated by the end user in ForeFlight.  You can now optionally specify the flight rule (IFR, VFR, YFR, ZFR) upon creation.  The default will continue to be IFR where unspecified. 

April 2020

• Vendor ID
  As a way of better understanding the source of API traffic and to know which company to work with when troubleshooting issues, we’ve added a Vendor ID that should be included in the header of all API requests coming from your application. If you don't have a vendor ID you can request one by filling out this form.
• Query Flights by Modified Date/time
  A new operation within the Flights API called List Modified Flights allows you to pass the last datetime you requested flight information as a parameter and will return a list of flights added or updated since that time, paving the way for simpler two-way integrations.
• Save Your Routes
  The SavedRoutes API enables you to create, list, and delete saved routes.  Dispatch users are able to save routes that may be used frequently in their operations. 
• Release Flights to Crew
  Within Dispatch, flights coming from external applications or planned in Dispatch are hidden from the assigned crew until action is taken to release the flight.  A new Release Flight operation in the Flights API will allow you to control the release status and whether the crew can edit the flight plan.