DAFIF () or the ''Digital Aeronautical Flight Information File'' is a comprehensive database of up-to-date

aeronautical Aeronautics is the science or art involved with the study, design, and manufacturing of air flight–capable machines, and the techniques of operating aircraft and rockets within the atmosphere. The British Royal Aeronautical Society identifies ...

data, including information on

airport An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial air transport. Airports usually consists of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surfa ...

airway The respiratory tract is the subdivision of the respiratory system involved with the process of respiration in mammals. The respiratory tract is lined with respiratory epithelium as respiratory mucosa. Air is breathed in through the nose t ...

airspace Airspace is the portion of the atmosphere controlled by a country above its territory, including its territorial waters or, more generally, any specific three-dimensional portion of the atmosphere. It is not the same as aerospace, which is th ...

navigation Navigation is a field of study that focuses on the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another.Bowditch, 2003:799. The field of navigation includes four general categories: land navigation ...

data, and other facts relevant to flying in the entire world, managed by the

National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is a combat support agency within the United States Department of Defense whose primary mission is collecting, analyzing, and distributing geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) in support of natio ...

(NGA) of the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

Withdrawal of public access

DAFIF was publicly available until October 2006 through the Internet; however, it was closed to public access because "increased numbers of foreign source providers are claiming

intellectual property rights Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...

or are forewarning NGA that they intend to copyright their source". Currently, only federal and state government agencies, authorized government contractors, and

Department of Defense Department of Defence or Department of Defense may refer to: Current departments of defence * Department of Defence (Australia) * Department of National Defence (Canada) * Department of Defence (Ireland) * Department of National Defense (Philipp ...

customers are able to access the DAFIF data. At the time of the announcement, the NGA did not say who the "foreign source providers" were. It was subsequently revealed that the

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...

n Government was behind the move. The Australian government-owned corporation

Airservices Australia Airservices Australia is an Australian Government owned corporation, responsible for providing safe, secure, efficient and environmentally responsible services to the aviation industry within the Australian Flight Information Region (FIR). S ...

in September 2003 started charging for access to Australian data. Rather than exclude the Australian data, the NGA opted to stop making the data available to the public.

USFIF

A product called USFIF (pronounced as '' yoos-fəf'') or the ''United States Flight Information File'' which contains only data related to the

was available on the NGA website until October 2007. NGA no longer hosts any aeronautical information on the publicly available website.

Replacement for Google Earth data

Since the DAFIF data has ceased to be available to the public, new sources of the data have arrived, though none is (yet) a complete replacement: * In

Google Earth Google Earth is a computer program that renders a 3D computer graphics, 3D representation of Earth based primarily on satellite imagery. The program maps the Earth by superimposition, superimposing satellite images, aerial photography, and geog ...

format ( KML
Google Earth 3D Airspace
* Started soon after the withdrawal of the DAFIF data, th
OurAirports web site
is a community effort to produce an open (public domain) database of airports and navigation aids—nightly CSV data dumps are available from the site. Since OurAirports is open source, there are a lot of duplicate airports in the system and the data is not necessarily accurate as an official source would be. *

OpenStreetMap OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a free, open geographic database updated and maintained by a community of volunteers via open collaboration. Contributors collect data from surveys, trace from aerial imagery and also import from other freely licensed g ...

holds information about many aerodromes, and can be downloaded through the ''Overpass'' service. * In other open formats, publicly contributed data, th
Worldwide Soaring Turnpoint Exchange: Airspace

References

{{reflist Air navigation Aeronautical databases