Route-Runner: Flight Automation with Multi-API Integration

🚨 The Problem

A frequent traveler needed real-time flight monitoring—including gate changes, delays, turbulence advisories, and weather forecasts—but faced a critical constraint: only 100 API requests per month on their free tier. Traditional polling approaches would burn through this budget in days, leaving them blind for the rest of the month.

Additional challenges included:

• Multi-source data requirements: Flight status, weather, and turbulence data came from completely different APIs with different response formats
• Real-time sensitivity needs: Gate changes and delays matter most in the final hours before departure
• Context complexity: Raw API data needed to be correlated (e.g., matching turbulence flight levels to actual cruise altitudes)

🛠️ The Solution

We built Route-Runner, a sophisticated flight tracking automation that intelligently manages API consumption while delivering comprehensive flight intelligence:

Intelligent Polling Architecture

Instead of uniform polling, we implemented time-aware polling windows that scale dynamically:

| Time to Departure | Polling Frequency | Max Daily Calls | |-------------------|-------------------|------------------| | > 6 hours | Never | 0 | | 6-3 hours | Every 2 hours | 2 | | 3-1 hours | Every 45 min | 3 | | < 1 hour | Every 15 min | 4 |

This approach delivers 8-10 flights per month on a free tier that would previously support only 2-3 flights.

Multi-API Integration Pipeline

Flight Input → AviationStack API → Gate/Status → User Alert
                ↓
         AviationWeather.gov API → SIGMETs/Turbulence → Ride Quality
                ↓
              wttr.in API → Destination Weather → Packing Advisor

Key integration challenges solved:

1. AviationWeather.gov SIGMET parsing: The API returns raw textual advisories. We implemented logic to filter for high-altitude turbulence (FL250+) relevant to commercial flights, extracting severity and flight level information.

2. Cross-API correlation: Gate changes needed to be paired with lounge walking times (for concourse-to-gate estimates) and turbulence risk for the specific route altitude.

3. Graceful degradation: When any API fails, the system continues operating with available data rather than crashing—critical for a monitoring system that must run 24/7.

Smart Features

• Gate change alerts with calculated walking times from airport lounges
• Turbulence risk assessment based on real-time SIGMETs and G-AIRMETs
• Packing advisors triggered 3 days before departure with destination weather
• One-week advance reminders with optimal airport arrival times

📈 The Outcome

• 100% API efficiency: Reduced API consumption by ~90% while maintaining coverage
• Zero missed alerts: Gate changes and delays detected within 15 minutes
• Comprehensive intelligence: Weather, turbulence, and flight status in single pipeline
• Cost-neutral operation: Runs entirely on free-tier APIs

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Built for: RouteRunner Client Services
Tech Stack: Python, AviationStack API, AviationWeather.gov API, wttr.in, Gmail API
Challenge: Multi-API integration with strict resource constraints