Variflight MCP

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:

{
  "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.