ACARS is a complex system which consists of several software mod ules which cooperate. Depending on whether you want to simulate an airplane or a dispatch/ATC station, you need another module.
In most cases, you really want to use the normal ACARS server, reachable at the internet. But in some cases it comes in handy to run a mini server yourselves. This is the program you need for it.Take care that nice features such as METAR and TAF retrieval will not work with the mini server, as it does not at all go out onto the internet for data. It also does not support file uploads and downloads (though this can all be added, if need really be).
Project Progress
2026-10-21
Due to a large scale PHP security vulnerability that was leaked, many web
sites have been taken down out of precaution. Hoppie's ACARS followed this
and is temporarily offline until the PHP issue has been patched. I expect
not for too long.
14:50z -- The PHP fix is out and already made it to the distro, so I will
work on the installation of it. I have to do a few other things first (this
ACARS is hobby; other ACARS is work, and that has nothing to do with PHP but
with PBCS, and is "slightly more important" right now).
16:35z -- The server has been patched up with the official security fix and
all of ACARS is back online as of 16:33z.
2026-06-14
Today Hoppie's ACARS broke through the 25 million message achievement. Of
course it was not linear but a million messages per year the database
existed is a nice milestone.
see all previous progress messages
Installation
Fetch the install file and run it. It
will create a start icon for you.The program comes up with a single window and needs zero configuration. If you want, you can change the TCP port number via File/Setup, but then you must also include this port number in all your ACARS stations.
Typically, you use "localhost" in your stations to point at the ACARS mini server if it runs on the same machine as the stations. You may use "localhost:5000" if you changed the TCP port to 5000. All normal URL syntax is allowed, such as "http://192.168.0.1:5000" or host names if you have them.
By making the port number empty, the default 80 returns.