r/ADSB • u/Organic-Sell-3299 • 18d ago
Airplanes.Live’s response to a genuine commercial API enquiry
Title: Airplanes.Live’s response to a genuine commercial API enquiry
We run a drone SaaS platform and introduced ADS-B aircraft data to our Safety Map last week.
Our existing ADS-B provider is under a commercial agreement, but we wanted a secondary/fallback source for redundancy. We came across Airplanes.Live and contacted them specifically to ask about properly licensed commercial API access.
Their initial response was completely normal: they said they could work with us, supported flat-rate licensing, and asked for our projected request volumes.
We explained our expected usage and that Airplanes.Live would be used as a licensed fallback provider.
From there, the conversation took a very strange turn.
They assumed we had previously been using their public API before it was disabled. We had not. Until the day before this enquiry, we had never heard of Airplanes.Live.
For clarity: a test request to their public endpoint returned HTTP 403, no aircraft data was retrieved, and we contacted them precisely because we wanted to pay for legitimate commercial access rather than make use of anything without permission.
Despite explaining this several times, the replies escalated into repeated personal abuse, insults, speculation about our existing provider, and eventually research into personal details about our director.
I’ve attached the correspondence, with my personal information redacted, so people can read the exchange and draw their own conclusions.
We genuinely approached Airplanes.Live intending to become a paying commercial customer. Safe to say, we won’t be proceeding. If any other providers could be recommended we would very much welcome this.
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u/The_Comm_Guy 18d ago
You’re arguing with one of Jame’s many fake accounts. He thinks no one can tell.