flightaware.com: what it tells AI crawlers

On 27 October 2026, flightaware.com's robots.txt fully blocked GPTBot.

Last verified 2026-10-28 03:59 UTC (daily run of 2026-10-27). Proof for that day.

Panel

top 10k (Tranco)

robots.txt

ok (HTTP 200) · https://www.flightaware.com/robots.txt
unchanged since 2026-10-27 · sha256 38cc59b874450c45… · view as recorded

The * group

allows applies to every agent without its own group

Per AI bot, 2026-10-27

Other signals

robots.txt as recorded sha256 e11d6a4b106794cf…

#
# robots.txt for www.flightaware.com hosted by vealy.dal.flightaware.com
#

#
# Specific unwanted clients
#

User-agent: UbiCrawler
Disallow: /

User-agent: DOC
Disallow: /

User-agent: Zao
Disallow: /

User-agent: sitecheck.internetseer.com
Disallow: /

User-agent: Zealbot
Disallow: /

User-agent: MSIECrawler
Disallow: /

User-agent: SiteSnagger
Disallow: /

User-agent: WebStripper
Disallow: /

User-agent: WebCopier
Disallow: /

User-agent: Fetch
Disallow: /

User-agent: Offline Explorer
Disallow: /

User-agent: Teleport
Disallow: /

User-agent: TeleportPro
Disallow: /

User-agent: WebZIP
Disallow: /

User-agent: linko
Disallow: /

User-agent: HTTrack
Disallow: /

User-agent: Microsoft.URL.Control
Disallow: /

User-agent: Xenu
Disallow: /

User-agent: larbin
Disallow: /

User-agent: libwww
Disallow: /

User-agent: ZyBORG
Disallow: /

User-agent: Download Ninja
Disallow: /

User-agent: grub-client
Disallow: /

User-agent: k2spider
Disallow: /

User-agent: NPBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: WebReaper
Disallow: /

User-agent: Irvine
Disallow: /

User-agent: 360Spider
Disallow: /

User-agent: bingbot
Crawl-delay: 1

#
# Command line recursive requests as well as automated fetching from the non-
# exportable data is not acceptable.
#
# See:
#	https://www.flightaware.com/about/termsofuse
#	https://www.flightaware.com/commercial/flightxml/
#
User-agent: wget
Disallow: /account/
Disallow: /analysis/
Disallow: /include/
Disallow: /live/
Disallow: /resources/
Disallow: /map/
Disallow: /me/
Disallow: /photos/


#
# General robot rules
#
User-agent: *
Disallow: /account/
Disallow: /ajax/
Disallow: /bait/
Disallow: /errors/
Disallow: /live/flight/id/
Disallow: /mapi/
Disallow: /me/
Disallow: /photos/upload.rvt
Disallow: /photos/upload
Disallow: /mp/
Disallow: /live/report.rvt
Disallow: /adsb/register
Disallow: /adsb/request
Disallow: /adsb/flightfeeder/terms
Disallow: /photos/crowdsource/
Disallow: /photos/crowdsource.rvt
Disallow: /commercial/flightxml/v3/

#
# Stop Applebot from beating the crap out of ajax endpoints (specifically the
# static flight map one)
#
User-agent: Applebot
Disallow: /ajax/

User-agent: Cliqzbot
Disallow: /

# Allow Twitter to grab article and careers blobs
User-agent: Twitterbot
Allow: /news/
Allow: /about/careers/

# Stop OpenAI/ChatGPT from training on our data
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

robots.txt versions

Timeline of changes

Reconstructed history (Common Crawl)

From Common Crawl's robots.txt captures: what CCBot was served, one crawl per quarter. A separate series from the daily observations above; a 403 here means Common Crawl was refused, not this ledger.

Evidence

Every daily observation of flightaware.com is a leaf in that day's Merkle tree. Proof of the robots.txt line for 2026-10-27: audit path (JSON), day root and OpenTimestamps proof (complete (bitcoin block 973493)).

API: https://infrarabbit.com/crawlers/api/v1/policy/flightaware.com