An avionics system in an aircraft for providing flight data from an onboard flight management computer (FMC) to requesting applications is disclosed. The system includes a flight management system (FMS) service layer executing on the FMC on a thread separate from a thread that executes FMS core functions. The FMS service layer provides a FMC networked node server for responding to queries from a plurality of external applications for data generated from the FMS core functions without interrupting the FMS core functions. The FMC networked node server is configured to: receive a request from a client application using a server specified API for data elements from a specified input flight plan; retrieve the specified input flight plan from the FMS core functions; extract the requested data elements; and output the requested data elements to the client application without affecting the active thread that executes FMS core functions.