Access Real-Time Aviation Data

Aviationstack MCP Server is an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that provides tools for the AviationStack API. It exposes endpoints for real-time and future flight data and for aviation reference data, so any MCP-compatible client can look things up in natural language. It is MIT licensed and listed in several MCP directories, including the modelcontextprotocol/servers community list, punkpeye/awesome-mcp-servers, Glama, Smithery and mcpservers.org.

The features are looking up a single flight by its flight number, getting flights for a specific airline, fetching historical flights by date, retrieving arrival and departure schedules for airports, fetching future flight schedules from tomorrow through about 12 months ahead, getting random aircraft types and detailed information on random airplanes, countries and cities, and listing airports, airlines, routes and taxes.

The 13 tools are get_flight_status, flights_with_airline, historical_flights_by_date, flight_arrival_departure_schedule, future_flights_arrival_departure_schedule, random_aircraft_type, random_airplanes_detailed_info, random_countries_detailed_info, random_cities_detailed_info, list_airports, list_airlines, list_routes and list_taxes. The list tools take limit, offset and search parameters, and airline and airport tools use IATA codes such as AA100 for a flight number. Every tool returns the same JSON envelope: on success an ok flag set to true with a count and data, plus a pagination block on list tools and a message when nothing matched, and on failure an ok flag set to false.

Use it when an assistant needs flight status, airline flights, airport boards, future schedules or aviation reference data. Some limits come from the underlying API: historical flights need the Basic plan or higher, and the airport arrival and departure board covers the current day only. Future schedules cover tomorrow through about 12 months ahead.

You need an Aviationstack API key, and it notes a free key is available from Aviationstack. It is not a booking or ticketing tool.

Prerequisites are an Aviationstack API key, Python 3.13 or newer and the uv package manager. The key is passed in the AVIATION_STACK_API_KEY environment variable. Inputs are tool parameters such as flight_iata, flight_date, airline_name, number_of_flights and airport_iata_code. Outputs are the standard JSON envelope described above.

The server also ships four reusable prompts that steer a model toward the right tool (plan_flight_status_lookup, plan_airline_flight_lookup, plan_future_schedule_lookup and plan_reference_data_lookup) and three resources: server_metadata, aviationstack_endpoints and tool_input_examples, which gives a sample payload for a given tool.

The recommended setup uses uvx without cloning the repository. Add this to your MCP client configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "Aviationstack MCP": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "aviationstack-mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "AVIATION_STACK_API_KEY": "<your-api-key>"
      }
    }
  }
}

You can alternatively clone the repository and run it locally with uv. For development, the main logic is in src/aviationstack_mcp/server.py, tools are Python functions decorated with @mcp.tool() that validate input with a Pydantic model, and the server uses FastMCP with the mcp dependency pinned below version 2. Tools never raise: every failure is caught and returned as the error envelope. The CI runs unit tests, pylint that must stay at 10.00/10 and coverage, and the server card file must be regenerated after any tool, prompt or resource change.

It is for developers and travel-tool builders who want an AI assistant to answer flight and airline questions using live AviationStack data.