Airports MCP Server

@pipeworx/airports

Airport lookup, two sources side by side:

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1861+ live data sources. This is an independent, unofficial integration — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream provider.

• AirportGap (live, free, keyless) — the original tools. A static OpenFlights-derived snapshot, IATA-code and top-~150-city coverage only.
• OurAirports (fleet #2977, D1 copy) — every airfield OurAirports tracks: ~86,000 rows including ICAO-only idents, heliports, seaplane bases, balloonports and closed fields, plus their runways, radio frequencies and navaids.

Tools

AirportGap-backed (live upstream fetch)

• search_airports(query) — city name or IATA code, via a bundled city->IATA map (top ~150 hubs).
• get_airport(iata_code) — single airport by IATA code.
• calculate_distance(from, to) — great-circle distance between two IATA codes.

An IATA code AirportGap's snapshot doesn't have (e.g. BER, opened 2020) returns found: false with a hint rather than erroring — it's a known dataset-age boundary, not an outage.

OurAirports-backed (D1, public domain)

• ourairports_lookup(code) — look up ANY airfield by ICAO code, IATA code, GPS code, or OurAirports' own local/national ident (e.g. a US local code like "00A", or a non-US ident like "AT-0001"). Returns name, type (large_airport/medium_airport/small_airport/heliport/ seaplane_base/balloonport/closed), coordinates, elevation, country/region, and scheduled-service flag.
• airport_runways(code) — per-runway length/width/surface/lighting/ closed flag, plus both ends' ident, coordinates, elevation, heading and displaced threshold.
• airport_frequencies(code) — radio frequencies (ATIS/TWR/GND/CLD/DIR/ APP/DEP/CTAF/UNICOM/...), description and MHz.
• airport_navaids(code) — navaids (NDB/VOR/DME/VOR-DME/VORTAC/TACAN/...) associated with the airfield: ident, name, type, frequency in kHz, coordinates, elevation, DME channel, power.
• ourairports_search(query?, country?, type?, limit?, offset?) — text match against name/municipality/ident, optionally narrowed by ISO country code or airfield type. Needs at least one of query/country/type — an unscoped call would otherwise mean a full-table scan of ~86k rows. limit defaults to 20 (max 100); a response with more matching rows than returned carries truncated: true and total_matching.

Every OurAirports-backed tool accepts any of ICAO/IATA/GPS/local code for code and resolves deterministically: OurAirports' own canonical ident wins over icao_code, which wins over gps_code, which wins over iata_code, so a code that happens to collide across columns never silently resolves to the wrong airfield. An unrecognized code is refused with a clear error, never an empty success — use ourairports_search to find the right code by name/city first if you don't already have it. A known airfield with zero matching child rows (e.g. a heliport with no fixed-wing runway) returns an empty array with found: true and an explanatory note — that is real data, not a failure.

Auth

Keyless. The OurAirports-backed tools answer only through the Pipeworx gateway, which holds the D1 copy; a standalone npm install has no data to read there and every tool throws a clear "not bound in this runtime" error instead of returning an empty list.

Data sources

• AirportGap (airportgap.com) — free public API, no auth.
• OurAirports — bulk CSV export (davidmegginson.github.io/ourairports-data, a public mirror of ourairports.com's own data). Per ourairports.com/data/: "All data is released to the Public Domain, and comes with no guarantee of accuracy or fitness for use." The site publishes bulk files only (no live query API), so this pack builds a copy (scripts/ourairports/load-data.mjs) rather than proxying. All six files (airports, runways, airport-frequencies, navaids, countries, regions) load whole — nothing here needs aggregation or a row cap at OurAirports' scale (the largest table is ~86k rows).

Refresh

OurAirports updates its CSVs on a rolling basis (new/changed airfields, runway edits, frequency changes). To refresh:

CLOUDFLARE_ACCOUNT_ID=ecc092eba5c5bacef3ccff9f9d7a4d8d \
  node scripts/ourairports/load-data.mjs \
  --db pipeworx-ourairports --config workers/gateway/wrangler.toml

Needs wrangler logged in to the Pipeworx Cloudflare account. The loader downloads all six CSVs fresh, rebuilds every table (DROP TABLE IF EXISTS

• reload — OurAirports revises existing rows rather than only appending), verifies the loaded row count against the parsed row count per table, and aborts loudly (non-zero exit, no partial "loaded" claim) on a mismatch rather than leaving the database silently incomplete. Not yet on a cron — run it by hand when the data looks stale (ourairports_lookup's data_as_of field carries the last load time).

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "airports": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/airports/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/airports/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1861+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

No MCP client? Call it over HTTP

curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_airports \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"query":"New York"}'

No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_airports. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.

Run it from npm

@pipeworx/mcp-airports is a local stdio bridge to the Pipeworx gateway: your MCP client starts it with npx, and it forwards every call to the same https://gateway.pipeworx.io/airports/mcp endpoint shown above. It needs network access; there is no offline mode.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "airports": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-airports"]
    }
  }
}

Without a key it calls anonymously, capped at 50 calls a day. A free account raises that to 200 a day: get a key at https://pipeworx.io/signup and add "env": { "PIPEWORX_API_KEY": "<your key>" } to the server entry. The key is sent as a Bearer token, the same way a hosted connection sends it, so calls are metered and billed exactly as they are there.

It lists only this pack's tools by default. Set PIPEWORX_META_TOOLS=1 to also list ask_pipeworx and the other gateway-wide tools.

Behind an HTTPS proxy: Node's built-in fetch does not read HTTPS_PROXY by default. Newer Node releases honour it when NODE_USE_ENV_PROXY=1 is set; check your Node version's documentation.

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Airports data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides
• pipeworx.io

License

MIT