We present the development and assessment of a new flight system that uses a commercially available continuous-wave, tunable infrared laser direct absorption spectrometer to measure N 2 O, CO 2 , CO, and H 2 O. When the commercial system is operated in an off-the-shelf manner, we find a clear cabin pressure/altitude dependency for N 2 O, CO 2 , and CO. The characteristics of this artifact make it difficult to reconcile with conventional calibration methods, so we present a novel procedure employing a high-flow system with high-frequency, short-duration sampling of a known calibration gas. This approach corrects for cabin pressure dependency as well as other sources of drift in the analyzer while maintaining a ~ 90 % duty cycle for 1 Hz sampling. Assessment and validation of the flight system with both extensive in-flight calibrations and comparisons with other flight-proven sensors demonstrate the validity of this method. In-flight 1σ precision is estimated at 0.05 ppb, 0.10 ppm, 1.00 ppb, and 10 ppm for N 2 O, CO 2 , CO, and H 2 O respectively, and traceability to WMO standards is found to be 0.14 ppb, 0.34 ppm, and 2.33 ppb for N 2 O, CO 2 , and CO. We show the system is capable of precise, accurate 1 Hz airborne observations of N 2 O, CO 2 , CO, and H 2 O and highlight flight data illustrating the value of this analyzer for studying N 2 O emissions on ~ 100 km spatial scales.