OAG Acquires FlightView to Grow its Flight Data Business

U.K.-based airline data firm OAG announced its acquisition of Boston-based flight information company FlightView for an undisclosed amount.

The acquisition of FlightView, which tracks flights and offers other data solutions for flights and airports, comes after OAG's ongoing work with the company over the past few years.

FlightView's site has more than 1 million monthly unique users and responds to more than 300 million flight status requests every month, OAG said in a statement. FlightView tracks more than 40 million flights each year that cover 90% of global schedules.

For comparison, OAG tracked 45.3 million flights in 2014 that covered 94.3% of global schedules. In that respect, OAG and FlightView were competitors.

Phil Callow, OAG's CEO, says the acquisition won't change what FlightView offers and will improve the quality of flight tracking data provided by OAG, which focuses on flight schedules, analytics and increasingly flight-tracking.

"This is a significant acquisition for us, and the FlightView brand will get stronger and they’re also in spaces that we’re not," said Callow. "Their 3 million app downloads are new to us and we’ll be seeking to build on that by bringing both businesses together."

"This acquisition will add complementary data providing a single truth of flight status performance that will be more comprehensive for travelers. FlightView's a natural fit and gives us better penetration into the North American market and helps us leverage our global customers and contacts with FlightView."

Callow said flight tracking data is the fastest-growing part of OAG's business, as OAG tracks more than 900 airlines, including 113 low cost carriers and 4,000 airports and processes more than 21 million flight status updates every month, equivalent to 715,000 each day.

This represents a change in direction for OAG, which was sold to Electra Partners in 2013 for $252 million, as they move toward focusing more on flight tracking.

FlightView's competitors include Flightradar24, FlightAware, FlightStats, Planefinder and Radarbox24, for example.