Data Sources Behind AeroCopilot (61 Pipelines)
AeroCopilot ingests 61 government and authoritative aviation data sources across weather, charts, compliance, safety, airport ops, and environmental feeds.
Data Sources Behind AeroCopilot (61 Pipelines)
Every weather call, NOTAM lookup, airworthiness check, and route warning that AeroCopilot surfaces is grounded in an upstream government feed. Sixty-one of them, catalogued and refreshed on schedules that match how the source itself publishes.
This page is the entry point for understanding what flows into the platform, who issues each feed, and why each one matters to a flight. The full machine-readable catalog drives the public /data-sources directory and is ranked by cadence on the /data-leaderboard.
The six categories
Sources are grouped by operational role. Counts are taken directly from the catalog at apps/web/lib/seo/data-sources-catalog.ts.
| Category | Count | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Weather | 12 | METAR, TAF, SIGMET, G-AIRMET, PIREP, winds/temps aloft, SPC convective outlook, SPC watches, NWS public alerts (CAP), NHC tropical cyclones, SWPC space weather, NWS area forecast discussions |
| Charts | 8 | VFR sectionals, terminal area charts, IFR low/high enroutes, instrument approach procedures, CIFP, chart supplement, AIRAC cycle schedule |
| Compliance | 15 | 14 CFR, SFAR 194, 49 USC §44809, advisory circulars, FAA orders, AIM, airworthiness directives, aircraft registry, airman registry, Part 135 operators, Part 145 repair stations, Part 141 flight schools, TFRs, NOTAMs, airspace boundaries |
| Safety | 8 | NTSB accident database, NASA ASRS, FAA wildlife strikes, CFIT hot spots, FAA airport hot spots, mountain obscuration, CIP/FIP icing, GTG turbulence |
| Airport Ops | 10 | FAA airport status, D-ATIS, preferred IFR routes, FAA Digital Obstacle File, UAS Facility Maps, ADS-B traffic, NOAA tide predictions, NDBC buoys, USNO sun & moon times, FAA weather cameras |
| Other | 8 | EPA AirNow AQI, NOAA HMS smoke plumes, NIFC wildfire activity, NOAA volcanic ash, Nav Canada METAR/TAF, NWS MOS, NWS Center Weather Advisories, NWS Meteorological Impact Statements |
Total: 61 sources.
Who issues these feeds
The catalog spans nine issuing agencies: FAA, NOAA, NWS, NTSB, EPA, USGS, NASA, Nav Canada, and AeroCopilot's own derived layers. Every source ingested by AeroCopilot ties back to one of these — there is no scraped-from-elsewhere data and no hidden re-publishers in the pipeline.
For each source, the catalog records the issuing agency, expected refresh cadence, plain-English description, what AeroCopilot ingests from it, how the platform uses it, the related product features that depend on it, and (where public) the upstream API URL.
How fresh the data is
Refresh cadences range from sub-second (ADS-B traffic) to annual (CFIT hot spot publication). The fastest tier — METAR observations, TFRs, NOTAMs, FAA airport status, NWS public alerts — refreshes every 5 to 10 minutes. The slowest tier covers reference datasets that the FAA itself only publishes on the 28-day or 56-day AIRAC cycle.
Live cron schedules for every refresh job live in apps/cron-worker/index.ts and are documented in detail in Freshness and Refresh Cycles.
Why this matters for flying
The catalog is not marketing furniture. Every AI Copilot answer, every briefing, every map overlay, and every airport directory page cites the upstream source it pulled from. When the FAA changes the obstacle file on a Tuesday, the AeroCopilot map reflects the new obstacle on the next AIRAC ingest — and the source page tells you exactly when that ingest ran.
That traceability is what makes the system defensible. A briefing PDF generated from these sources is acceptable evidence in a Letter of Investigation review because each row points back to the FAA, NWS, or NTSB feed that produced it.
How to explore
- The
/data-sourcespublic directory lists all 61 sources with badges for agency and cadence. - Each source has a dedicated page at
/data-sources/[id]explaining which features depend on it and which AI tools cite it. - The
/data-leaderboardpage ranks the catalog by refresh frequency. - For the underlying source-attribution model used by the AI Copilot, see Source Attribution and Transparency Layer.