canonical: https://jentic.com/apis/amadeus.com/amadeus-airline-code-lookup

# Amadeus Airline Code Lookup API

The Amadeus Airline Code Lookup API resolves IATA and ICAO airline codes to full carrier names and metadata. Given a code such as BA or AAL, it returns the carrier's commercial name and identifier mappings, which is essential for displaying human-readable airline names in flight search results, itineraries, and reporting. The single GET endpoint at /reference-data/airlines is read-only and is typically used as an enrichment step alongside Amadeus flight shopping APIs.

## For AI agents

Resolve IATA or ICAO airline codes to full carrier names. Agents call /reference-data/airlines to translate codes like BA into 'British Airways' for human-readable output.

## Scope

Does not return flight schedules, fares, or availability - use for resolving IATA and ICAO airline codes to carrier names only.

## Capabilities

- Resolve an IATA code such as BA to the carrier's commercial name
- Resolve an ICAO three-letter code such as AAL to the carrier's commercial name
- Look up multiple airline codes in a single GET request via the airlineCodes query parameter
- Map between IATA and ICAO identifiers when displaying flight search results
- Enrich itinerary records with carrier names before sending them to a customer

## Use cases

### Itinerary Display Enrichment

Translate IATA airline codes returned by Amadeus Flight Offers Search into the carrier's full commercial name before showing the itinerary to a traveller. The /reference-data/airlines GET endpoint accepts comma-separated codes and returns business names in a single round trip, which is faster than maintaining a static carrier table that drifts out of date.

Example prompt: Call /reference-data/airlines with airlineCodes=BA,AF,LH and return a map of code to carrier name.

### Reporting and Reconciliation

Reports that aggregate flight bookings or fares by carrier need consistent carrier names, not ambiguous two-letter codes. The lookup API gives finance and revenue teams a single source of truth for carrier identifiers, so monthly travel reports can group spend by airline reliably even when the flight system records only the IATA code.

Example prompt: Resolve every distinct airline code in last month's bookings dataset to a carrier name and group spend by carrier.

### Validating User-Supplied Codes

When a traveller types an airline code into a search box, validate it against the Airline Code Lookup before passing it to a downstream flight offer search. This catches typos early and gives the traveller a clearer error message than a 400 response from the flight search endpoint.

Example prompt: Verify that the user-supplied code XJ resolves to a known carrier and surface the carrier name back to the user.

### Agent Itinerary Generation

Let an AI travel agent enrich raw flight offers with carrier names automatically. Through Jentic the agent searches for 'translate airline code to name', loads the schema, and calls the lookup with the codes pulled from a Flight Offers response. The carrier names are then woven into the natural-language itinerary the agent returns to the user.

Example prompt: Use Jentic to find the airline lookup operation, pass the list of codes from the flight search, and produce a natural-language itinerary with carrier names.

## Key endpoints

| Method | Path | Description |
| --- | --- | --- |
| GET | /reference-data/airlines | Resolve IATA or ICAO airline codes to carrier names |

## Key resources

- **Airlines** — GET carrier names for one or more IATA or ICAO airline codes.

## Why Jentic

- **Setup:** Wiring the Airline Code Lookup API by hand means running Amadeus OAuth2 to get a token, targeting the test.api.amadeus.com/v1 host, and refreshing that token yourself. Through Jentic you install once, import the Airline Code Lookup API from the API Directory, store the OAuth2 credentials once, and your agent calls it.
- **Permission scoping:** The Airline Code Lookup API exposes a single read-only /reference-data/airlines endpoint whose codes travel as query parameters rather than a path resource, so limit the agent to that one operation. You choose whether the agent may call it, and no other operations exist to add.
- **Credential handling:** Your Amadeus OAuth2 credentials are stored once, encrypted, by your own Jentic One instance and injected at execution time. They never enter the agent's prompt, logs, or context.
- **Discovery method:** Agents search Jentic by intent such as 'resolve an IATA airline code to a carrier name', and Jentic returns the matching Amadeus operation with its input schema so the agent calls the right endpoint without browsing the reference docs.

## Related APIs

- **Amadeus Airport Nearest Relevant** — Returns the nearest commercial airports to a given coordinate, often used together with airline lookups when building flight UIs.
- **Amadeus Flight Check-in Links** — Returns the official check-in URL for a given carrier - uses the same airline code that the lookup resolves.
- **Amadeus Flight Availabilities Search** — Provides flight availability whose results carry IATA codes that the lookup resolves to names.

## FAQ

### What authentication does the Airline Code Lookup API use?

The API uses the Amadeus OAuth 2.0 client-credentials flow. Exchange your API key and secret at the Amadeus token endpoint, then send the resulting bearer token as Authorization: Bearer on the /reference-data/airlines call. Through Jentic the client credentials live in the encrypted vault and the bearer token is never exposed to the agent.

### Can I look up multiple airline codes in one request?

Yes. The /reference-data/airlines endpoint accepts a comma-separated airlineCodes query parameter, so you can resolve a batch of codes returned by a flight offers search in a single round trip rather than one call per carrier.

### What are the rate limits for the Airline Code Lookup API?

The OpenAPI specification does not declare rate limits. Amadeus applies a transactions-per-second cap that varies by API and contract tier - verify the exact limit for your account in the Amadeus self-service portal before relying on burst traffic.

### How do I resolve an airline code through Jentic?

Run pip install jentic, then search Jentic for 'translate airline code to name'. The Airline Code Lookup operation surfaces with its input schema; pass airlineCodes=BA,AF and execute. Jentic handles the OAuth token refresh against the Amadeus auth server.

### Does the Airline Code Lookup return ICAO as well as IATA codes?

Yes. Each result includes both the IATA two-letter code and the ICAO three-letter code, so a single lookup can be used to convert between the two identifiers when needed for downstream systems that expect ICAO.

### Is the Airline Code Lookup API free?

Amadeus self-service APIs include a free test environment with quota limits and a paid production tier. Production access requires a contract with Amadeus and pricing scales with transaction volume - confirm current rates in the Amadeus self-service developer portal.

### Can I limit what my agent is allowed to do with the Airline Code Lookup API?

Yes. This API exposes a single read-only operation, GET /reference-data/airlines, which resolves IATA or ICAO codes passed as query parameters, so there is exactly one call to grant. Because Jentic One is self-hosted, you run it under your own rules and decide whether your agent may invoke that lookup at all, and the encrypted Amadeus OAuth2 credentials are injected at execution time rather than handed to the agent. Since no other operations exist on this API, scoping it comes down to allowing or withholding that one read-only lookup.