FlightAware has sued prediction-market operator Kalshi in federal court, alleging that the company used its aviation data and trademark without permission to operate contracts tied to flight cancellations. The complaint was filed August 10 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York under case number 1:26-cv-06824. FlightAware is seeking damages and court orders that would stop Kalshi from continuing the disputed use of its data and branding.
The dispute traces back to Kalshi’s July launch of event contracts based on the percentage of scheduled flights canceled at particular airports during specified periods. Kalshi’s July 14 filing with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission designated FlightAware as the primary source agency, with U.S. Department of Transportation Bureau of Transportation Statistics data as a backup. The regulatory filing confirms that FlightAware data was built directly into the settlement methodology for the contracts.
FlightAware Alleges Contract and Trademark Violations
FlightAware claims Kalshi never obtained authorization to use its data commercially for the markets and alleges that the arrangement violated FlightAware’s website terms. The complaint says FlightAware sent cease-and-desist demands after learning about the contracts, but Kalshi continued offering markets whose pages stated that outcomes were verified using FlightAware. The lawsuit frames the dispute as both a data-licensing issue and an alleged unauthorized use of the FlightAware trademark.
Kalshi later added language stating that the products were not endorsed by or affiliated with FlightAware. FlightAware argues in the complaint that the disclaimer did not cure the alleged infringement because its name remained prominently connected with market resolution. Current Kalshi aviation-market pages continue to display a non-endorsement disclaimer. Whether those references constitute trademark infringement or breach FlightAware’s contractual restrictions is now a question for the court.
Safety Claims Meet Kalshi’s Manipulation Safeguards
FlightAware also raises a broader safety argument, alleging that markets paying out on flight cancellations could create financial incentives for someone to interfere with aviation operations. That is an allegation advanced by FlightAware, not evidence that Kalshi users have actually caused flight disruptions. The complaint says FlightAware wants the markets stopped before such harm occurs.
Kalshi’s own CFTC filing addresses deliberate interference directly. Its contract rules classify sabotage, unauthorized drones, tampering with airport infrastructure, false threats, malicious cyber incidents and other intentional disruption as excluded events when they determine the outcome. In such circumstances, Kalshi says settlement would instead use its fair-price procedures. Those safeguards complicate the claim that deliberate disruption would automatically generate a profitable cancellation payout, although they do not resolve FlightAware’s broader safety concerns.
The lawsuit seeks temporary, preliminary and permanent injunctive relief, damages, disgorgement of profits attributed to unauthorized trademark use and other remedies. No final determination has been made on FlightAware’s claims, and Kalshi had not publicly responded to the complaint when major legal and financial outlets reported the filing. The immediate development is therefore a contested intellectual-property and data-use case, not a ruling that Kalshi acted unlawfully.
The case could carry wider implications for prediction markets that rely on third-party information to settle contracts. The central question is whether a regulated event-contract platform can build settlement rules around commercially produced data and branding without the provider’s authorization, particularly when that provider argues the resulting markets create contractual, reputational and safety risks.
