We started collating flight emissions data for Leeds and Bradford airport to power our Flight Emissions comparison tool. We realised that it would benefit others if the emissions data were openly available and if other people could contribute by doing the work for other airports. This project aims to allow different people/organisations to take responsibility for collating data for different airports and publish it to their own URLs but make it available to others so we can see the bigger picture of flight emissions.
In an attempt to keep things manageable, for both us and tools that load the data, we’ve split this up into three parts:
This contains the full details for each departure from an airport in a given day (local time). You should have one directory for your data, in it there should be a seperate JSON file for each day, where the filename is the date in ISO format (YYYY-MM-DD.json). By splitting the data into individual days, it keeps filesize more manageable rather than linearly growing with time e.g. Leeds and Bradford works out at under 5.5 kB per file.
The file should have the following format:
{
"from": { // origin airport information
"n": "Leeds Bradford",
"ICAO": "EGNM",
"IATA": "LBA",
"geo": [-1.5,53.5],
"cc": "GB",
"continent": "EU"
},
"flights": [{
"id":"KL1540",
"time":"2019-12-11T06:10Z",
"airline":"KLM",
"aircraft":{"code":"E190","name":"EMBRAER ERJ190"},
"to":{"n":"Amsterdam","ICAO":"EHAM","IATA":"AMS","geo":[4.7639,52.3086],"cc":"NL","continent":"EU" },
"dist":{"km":462.46,"type":"gc"},
"emissions":{"kg":4717.13}
},{
//another flight
}]
}
from - the origin airport and should appear once per file. This helps if the file ends up on a different file system.
n - a free-form field for the displayed airport nameICAO - the ICOA code (usually 4 characters)IATA - the international airport code (usually 3 characters)geo - a [longitude,latitude] array with the coordinates in degrees (compatible with GeoJSON)cc - the two letter ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code for the origincontinent - a two letter continent code e.g. AF, NA, OC, AN, AS, EU, SAflights - an array of flights (in chronological order). Each flight contains:
id - the flight codetime - the ISO8601 timestamp for the departure in local time with timezone includedairline - the name of the airlineaircraft - details of the aircraft broken down into:
code - the aircraft type code e.g. “E190”name - the aircraft name e.g. “EMBRAER ERJ190”to - the destination broken down into:
n - a free-form field for the displayed airport nameICAO - the ICOA codeIATA - the international airport codegeo - a [longitude,latitude] array with the coordinates in degrees (compatible with GeoJSON)cc - the two letter ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code for the origincontinent - a two letter continent code e.g. AF, NA, OC, AN, AS, EU, SAdist - the distance
km - the distance in kilometrestype - gc for Great Circle distance or fp for flight path distance if that is knownemissions - the estimated CO2 emissions of the flight
kg - the kilograms of CO2You could perhaps scrape from an airport’s website or use a paid API such as Flight Aware. Flight Aware have a Scheduled end point that returns upcoming departures and gives aircraft type codes which then allows emissions factors to be found. That end point costs $0.0079 per request (which contains up to 15 flights). The response from Flight Aware’s Scheduled end point looks like this:
{"ScheduledResult":{"next_offset":15,"scheduled":[{"ident":"RYR2446","aircrafttype":"B738","filed_departuretime":1579264200,"estimatedarrivaltime":1579274100,"origin":"EGNM","destination":"LEMG","originName":"Leeds Bradford Int'l","originCity":"West Yorkshire, England","destinationName":"Malaga","destinationCity":"Malaga"},{"ident":"BEE736","aircrafttype":"DH8D","filed_departuretime":1579268700,"estimatedarrivaltime":1579271100,"origin":"EGNM","destination":"EGAC","originName":"Leeds Bradford Int'l","originCity":"West Yorkshire, England","destinationName":"George Best Belfast City","destinationCity":"Belfast, Northern Ireland"},{"ident":"STK3393","aircrafttype":"AT72","filed_departuretime":1579276200,"estimatedarrivaltime":1579279800,"origin":"EGNM","destination":"EIDW","originName":"Leeds Bradford Int'l","originCity":"West Yorkshire, England","destinationName":"Dublin Int'l","destinationCity":"Dublin"},{"ident":"EIN3393","aircrafttype":"","filed_departuretime":1579276200,"estimatedarrivaltime":1579279800,"origin":"EGNM","destination":"EIDW","originName":"Leeds Bradford Int'l","originCity":"West Yorkshire, England","destinationName":"Dublin Int'l","destinationCity":"Dublin"},{"ident":"RYR9079","aircrafttype":"B738","filed_departuretime":1579276200,"estimatedarrivaltime":1579284600,"origin":"EGNM","destination":"LEAL","originName":"Leeds Bradford Int'l","originCity":"West Yorkshire, England","destinationName":"Alicante","destinationCity":"Alicante / Benidorm / Costa Blanca"},{"ident":"EZE7606","aircrafttype":"JS41","filed_departuretime":1579278000,"estimatedarrivaltime":1579281300,"origin":"EGNM","destination":"EGHI","originName":"Leeds Bradford Int'l","originCity":"West Yorkshire, England","destinationName":"Southampton","destinationCity":"Southampton, England"},{"ident":"EXS205","aircrafttype":"B738","filed_departuretime":1579279200,"estimatedarrivaltime":1579282500,"origin":"EGNM","destination":"EHAM","originName":"Leeds Bradford Int'l","originCity":"West Yorkshire, England","destinationName":"Amsterdam Schiphol","destinationCity":"Amsterdam"},{"ident":"BEE738","aircrafttype":"DH8D","filed_departuretime":1579280700,"estimatedarrivaltime":1579283100,"origin":"EGNM","destination":"EGAC","originName":"Leeds Bradford Int'l","originCity":"West Yorkshire, England","destinationName":"George Best Belfast City","destinationCity":"Belfast, Northern Ireland"},{"ident":"KLM1550","aircrafttype":"E170","filed_departuretime":1579281900,"estimatedarrivaltime":1579285500,"origin":"EGNM","destination":"EHAM","originName":"Leeds Bradford Int'l","originCity":"West Yorkshire, England","destinationName":"Amsterdam Schiphol","destinationCity":"Amsterdam"},{"ident":"BAW1345","aircrafttype":"A319","filed_departuretime":1579284600,"estimatedarrivaltime":1579286700,"origin":"EGNM","destination":"EGLL","originName":"Leeds Bradford Int'l","originCity":"West Yorkshire, England","destinationName":"London Heathrow","destinationCity":"London, England"},{"ident":"RYR4107","aircrafttype":"B738","filed_departuretime":1579287900,"estimatedarrivaltime":1579294800,"origin":"EGNM","destination":"EPWR","originName":"Leeds Bradford Int'l","originCity":"West Yorkshire, England","destinationName":"Copernicus Wrocław","destinationCity":"Wrocław"},{"ident":"EIN3395","aircrafttype":"","filed_departuretime":1579288200,"estimatedarrivaltime":1579291800,"origin":"EGNM","destination":"EIDW","originName":"Leeds Bradford Int'l","originCity":"West Yorkshire, England","destinationName":"Dublin Int'l","destinationCity":"Dublin"},{"ident":"STK3395","aircrafttype":"AT72","filed_departuretime":1579288200,"estimatedarrivaltime":1579291800,"origin":"EGNM","destination":"EIDW","originName":"Leeds Bradford Int'l","originCity":"West Yorkshire, England","destinationName":"Dublin Int'l","destinationCity":"Dublin"},{"ident":"RYR157","aircrafttype":"B738","filed_departuretime":1579290300,"estimatedarrivaltime":1579293000,"origin":"EGNM","destination":"EIDW","originName":"Leeds Bradford Int'l","originCity":"West Yorkshire, England","destinationName":"Dublin Int'l","destinationCity":"Dublin"},{"ident":"BEE740","aircrafttype":"DH8D","filed_departuretime":1579291800,"estimatedarrivaltime":1579294200,"origin":"EGNM","destination":"EGAC","originName":"Leeds Bradford Int'l","originCity":"West Yorkshire, England","destinationName":"George Best Belfast City","destinationCity":"Belfast, Northern Ireland"}]}}
This gives the flight number (ident), aircraft type code (aircrafttype), and destination ICAO code (destination) for each flight. It is limited to 15 results unless you also set howMany=30 in the API call and make sure you have also (once) called the SetMaximumResultSize end point e.g. http://flightxml.flightaware.com/json/FlightXML2/SetMaximumResultSize?max_size=30.
You can convert ICAO codes to airport names, latitudes/longitudes, country code, and continent using this big list of airports which will allow you to calculate the Great Circle distance between the origin and destination.
Opentraveldata have a big maintained list of airlines in a separate repo. This is a ^ delimited file of the form:
2char_code^3char_code^num_code^name^type
...
BA^BAW^125^British Airways p.l.c.^I
FR^RYR^^Ryanair Ltd.^I
If you take the first three characters of the ident you can look up the airline name e.g. RYR2446 gives us RYR which is Ryanair.
Alternatively, Opentraveldata have a more current list of airlines but it is not as comprehensive.
We use the methodology from the Euro Control Small Emitters Tool (v5.09; 2019-11-29). For each aircraft type designator it provides FUEL_TOT, FUEL_TOT_MARG_RATE, CORR_FACTOR, and CO2_COEFF. The CO_2 emissions (kg) are then calculated using:
(FUEL_TOT + (d / 1.852) * FUEL_TOT_MARG_RATE) * CORR_FACTOR * CO2_COEFF
where d is the full distance flown. If the true flight path is not known (e.g. where you have had to use Great Circle Distance), d in this calculation should be the Great Circle Distance with an addition of 95 km (51.295 nautical miles) as indicated in EU EST regulation. This additional 95 km is a factor to deal with take-off/landing and deviations from the Great Circle line; it affects short flights more than longer ones. We’ve collated the aircraft data from the Euro Control Small Emitters Tool into aircraft.csv.
Each individual airport has a metadata file designed to provide summary data to tools (e.g. the Flight Emissions tool displays today’s total kg of CO2, total flights, total kilometres flown, and unique destinations) and let them know which dates have more data available for further breakdown. It is expected to be updated on a daily basis.
{
"directory": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/patricklake2/flight-emissions/master/leeds-bradford/data/",
"lastupdate": "2020-01-08T06:00Z",
"dates": ["2019-12-11","2019-12-12","2019-12-13","2019-12-14","2019-12-20","2020-01-07"]
"emissions": [135000,130000,125000,140000,139000,135628]
"flights": [19,17,16,21,20,19]
}
The format is defined as follows:
directory - the directory where the individual data files for each day are storedlastupdate - the ISO 8601 date and time that this was last updateddates - a chronologically ordered array of ISO 8601 dates (local time) for which individual data files exist. These allow URLs to be constructed to get the breakdown for specific daysemissions - an array (in the same order as dates) with the total emissions in kilogramsflights - an array (in the same order as dates) with the number of flights per dayWe’ve used ordered arrays so that more parameters could be added in the future, if necessary. With dates, emissions, and flights the file should grow by around 25 bytes per day (~9kB per year).
Once you’ve got your flight data and airport metadata files published somewhere on the web (with CORS enabled), you just need to add the location of your airport metadata file to our our Primary index file. You can edit it yourself and open a pull request, or open an issue and we’ll help. This file will let tools know which airports are available. It shouldn’t need to be updated often.
[
{ "IATA":"LBA", "ICAO":"EGNM", "n":"Leeds Bradford", "author":"Patrick Lake", "url":"https://github.com/patricklake2/flight-emissions/", "index":"https://raw.githubusercontent.com/patricklake2/flight-emissions/master/leeds-bradford/data/index.json" },
{ "IATA":"MAN", "ICAO":"EGCC", "n":"Manchester", "author":"TBD", "repo":"", "index":"" }
]
Each airport then contains:
IATA - the three letter IATA code (if it exists)ICAO - the ICOA code (if it exists)n - a free-form field for the displayed airport nameauthor - the name of the person compiling emissions data for this airporturl - a URL to e.g. the Github repositoryindex - the URL of an index.json file that defines the metadata for this airport