Case Study: FlightStats achieves scalable, temporally-aware reference data and rapid API delivery with ArangoDB

Have a Pleasant Journey with FlightStats and ArangoDB

FlightStats, a leading provider of real-time global flight data used by airlines, airports and major information providers, faced fragmented aviation data from many sources and needed to harmonize reference data (airports, airlines, equipment) with temporal effectiveness for accurate historical reporting and predictive analytics. Their challenges included storing each change with an effective date, making schema changes easier, improving their authoring UI, reducing load on relational databases, and providing a scalable, well-documented API layer to support rapid team growth and high traffic volumes.

FlightStats solved these problems by adopting ArangoDB’s multi-model database (documents/graphs/key-value) and using AQL plus the Foxx microservice framework and HTTP APIs to store each modification as a dated document (key = id + effective_date) and run logic inside the database. ArangoDB delivered the required performance and scalability, enabled fast API development and deployment, simplified onboarding with strong docs, and now powers reference data across FlightStats’ products—supporting storage for 30k+ airports and airlines and handling the company’s high traffic while reducing reliance on their relational DB.

FlightStats

Benjamin Corliss

Platform Engineer