Patent ID: 8497803

Claim:
A method for distributing flight tracking data received from a number of public and/or private sources to users having permission to access only various subsets of said sources comprising the steps of: receiving flight tracking data from a plurality of substantially real-time sources, wherein at least a first one of the sources requires that the portion of said flight tracking data provided by said first source be shared only with authorized users; storing a plurality of user accounts, wherein a first user account includes authorization information indicating which of the plurality of sources the user is authorized to access information from; determining a plurality of flight paths for a first flight using at least a first processor, wherein each flight path is determined using only the flight tracking data received from a different subset of said plurality of sources; storing said plurality of flight paths in an electronic database; receiving a request for flight tracking data associated with said first flight from a user associated with said first user account through a digital network; selecting a first flight path, from said plurality of flight paths, which was determined using a subset of said plurality of sources that, based upon said authorization information, the user is authorized to access each of; and presenting said first flight path to the user through said digital network.