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Getting an AeroDataBox API key

Flightlog needs one piece of help from the outside world: when you punch in a flight number, something has to know that QR 8501 on 13 Oct 2026 went from Auckland to Honolulu on a Boeing 777, departed from gate F3, and landed at gate A58. That something is AeroDataBox.

AeroDataBox publishes its API through RapidAPI, which is where you'll grab a key.

Step-by-step

  1. Create a RapidAPI account. Head to rapidapi.com and sign up — Google or GitHub sign-in works fine.

  2. Subscribe to AeroDataBox. Go to the AeroDataBox listing on RapidAPI and click Subscribe to Test. Pick the BASIC plan — it's free and gives you a healthy monthly quota that's more than enough for personal use.

  3. Copy your X-RapidAPI-Key. On the AeroDataBox page, look at the right-hand panel under Header Parameters. You'll see a key labelled X-RapidAPI-Key with a long string. That's your API key — copy it.

  4. Paste it into your .env.

.env
AERODATABOX_API_KEY=your_long_key_string_here

That's the whole setup. Restart the container after editing .env and you're done.

Which endpoint does Flightlog hit?

Just one: GET /flights/Number/{number}/{date} — Flight on a specific date. Every other piece of info on the dashboard (distances, airline names, airport metadata) is derived locally from the data this endpoint returns plus a small built-in airport database.

How many calls will I make?

Flightlog caches every lookup in its local SQLite database. The same flight number + date combination is fetched from AeroDataBox once and then served from the cache forever after. In practice:

  • Logging a new flight = 1 API call
  • Re-opening that flight, re-running the same search, exporting, browsing = 0 API calls
  • Re-importing your own Flightlog CSV export = 0 API calls (everything is in the file)
  • Importing a Flighty CSV with enrichment turned on = up to 1 call per flight under one year old

If you're worried about quota, leave enrichment off when you import — you'll still get the basics (date, airline, route) from the CSV itself.

Keys are local

Your API key only ever leaves the Flightlog container in outbound requests to AeroDataBox. It's never sent to your browser, never logged in plain text, never shared with anything else.