# variflight-mcp [Health: Active]

**Category:** 💻 Developer Tools  
**Repository:** https://github.com/variflight/variflight-mcp  
**GitHub Stars:** 33  
**npm Downloads (last month):** 4450  
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**Installs:** 0  
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**Directory Page:** https://allmcps.com/mcp/variflight-mcp

## Description
A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server implementation for Variflight services.

## Tools
Capabilities this server exposes over MCP:

- **searchFlightsByDepArr** — Search direct flights by departure and arrival location plus date. Use depcity and arrcity when the user specifies cities such as BJS or SHA. Use dep and arr when the user specifies exact airports such as PEK or PVG. Provide one departure field and one arrival field, and do not mix city and airport codes for the same side. All codes must be valid IATA 3-letter codes. Date must be in YYYY-MM-DD format. For today's date, use getTodayDate instead of hardcoding.
- **searchFlightsByNumber** — Search a flight by flight number and date. The flight number must include the airline code, for example MU2157 or CZ3969. dep and arr are optional and should only be provided when the exact airports are known. Date must be in YYYY-MM-DD format. For today's date, use getTodayDate instead of hardcoding.
- **getFlightTransferInfo** — Search connecting flight options between a departure city and an arrival city on a specific date. Use city IATA 3-letter codes such as BJS, SHA, or LAX. This tool is for transfer or connection itineraries between cities, not for airport weather, airport facilities, or realtime tracking. Date must be in YYYY-MM-DD format. For today's date, use getTodayDate instead of hardcoding.
- **flightHappinessIndex** — Use this tool when the user wants comfort-focused details for a known flight, such as punctuality, aircraft type, cabin configuration, seat comfort, meals, entertainment, or other onboard experience details. This tool works best when a specific flight number and date are already known. Do not use it for fare search, itinerary recommendation, or raw price comparison.
- **getRealtimeLocationByAnum** — Get realtime flight location by aircraft registration number, also called tail number, such as B2021 or B2022. Use this only when the aircraft registration number is known. If the registration number is unknown, first try to find the flight through searchFlightsByNumber and then use the aircraft registration number from that result.
- **getTodayDate** — Get today's date in local timezone (YYYY-MM-DD format). Use this tool whenever you need today's date - NEVER hardcode dates.
- **getFutureWeatherByAirport** — Get the 3-day airport weather forecast for today, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow by airport IATA 3-letter code, such as PEK, SHA, CAN, or HFE.
- **searchFlightItineraries** — Use this tool when the user wants a concise recommended itinerary summary in natural language. It returns a text-style result that summarizes how many sale flights match, the overall lowest price, the shortest duration, and several recommended options. Use city IATA 3-letter codes only. If the user instead needs structured raw flight pricing data with each flight and cabin price, use getFlightPriceByCities.
- **getFlightPriceByCities** — Use this tool when the user needs structured raw pricing data. It returns sale flights between two cities as a list of flights, and each flight contains cabin entries with prices. This is better than searchFlightItineraries when the caller needs per-flight, per-cabin price details instead of a natural-language recommendation summary. All city codes must be valid IATA 3-letter codes (e.g. BJS for Beijing, SHA for Shanghai, CAN for Guangzhou, HFE for Hefei).

## Claude Desktop Quick Installation
Install path detected from listing signals. Uses `npx` (confidence: high):

```json
"mcpServers": {
  "variflight-mcp": {
    "command": "npx",
    "args": ["-y","@variflight-ai/variflight-mcp"],
    "env": {
      "VARIFLIGHT_API_KEY": ""
    }
  }
}
```

**Requires environment variables:** `VARIFLIGHT_API_KEY` — the values above are empty placeholders; fill in real credentials before running (see the repository for what each one is for).

## Documentation

## What variflight-mcp MCP server does

The variflight-mcp MCP server exposes VariFlight flight information services as MCP tools. It covers several stages of flight research: finding direct flights by route and date, looking up a flight number, finding connecting options, comparing comfort-related details, checking an aircraft’s current position, and retrieving an airport forecast.

The server also provides two city-pair data tools. One returns a natural-language itinerary summary with recommended options, the lowest overall price, the shortest duration, and suggested itineraries. The other returns structured sale-flight data, including cabin-level prices for each flight.

## How it works

Requests use VariFlight-specific city, airport, flight-number, and aircraft-registration identifiers. Direct-flight searches accept a departure, arrival, and date. The departure and arrival values can use city codes or exact airport codes, but the same side of a search should not mix those formats. Flight-number queries require a flight number and date, while transfer searches use departure and arrival city codes plus a departure date.

The direct-flight and transfer tools support optional response controls. `limit` caps the number of results, `offset` skips results, and `detail` selects either core fields with `summary` or all available fields with `full`. When pagination is used, responses include counts and may return a `next_offset` value for the following request. Each additional page is a separately billed API call.

## Setup and configuration

The variflight-mcp MCP server requires a Variflight API key, available from the Variflight MCP site. A standard stdio client configuration starts the package with `npx` and passes the key through `VARIFLIGHT_API_KEY`:

```json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "variflight": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@variflight-ai/variflight-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "VARIFLIGHT_API_KEY": "your_api_key_here"
      }
    }
  }
}
```

This setup retrieves the package when the client starts it. Replace the placeholder with a valid key before making requests.

## Tools and capabilities

The variflight-mcp MCP server includes these capabilities:

- Search direct flights by departure, arrival, and date.
- Find a flight by flight number and date.
- Search connecting-flight options between cities.
- Retrieve comfort information such as punctuality, aircraft type, cabin configuration, meals, and entertainment.
- Track real-time aircraft location by registration or tail number.
- Retrieve a three-day forecast for an airport.
- Generate recommended flight itineraries and summary comparisons.
- Return structured city-pair sale-flight prices by cabin.

## Limitations and notes

The server depends on a Variflight API key and the data returned by VariFlight services. Airport, city, flight-number, and aircraft-registration inputs must use the identifiers expected by the relevant tool. Large direct-flight or transfer responses can contain many results and fields, so pagination and summary detail can reduce response size. Pagination also creates a separate billed call for each page requested.

_Full upstream README: https://allmcps.com/mcp/variflight-mcp/readme_