Book Chennai flights 30 days out and pay 24% less than day-before fares, 10.8 points better than the national network across all 7 routes

Across all seven routes into Chennai, advertised fares quoted on the morning of 4 November 2026 show a 30-day booking is 24.2 per cent cheaper than a day-before booking, compared with a network-wide figure of 13.4 per cent, a gap of 10.8 percentage points in Chennai's favour. The chart shows how the fare-time index moves from 90 days before departure to the day before, separately for Chennai routes and for the broader network.

What the numbers show

For Chennai, the fare-time index, which sets each route's day-before fare at 100 and measures all other booking times against it, reads 78.3 at 90 days out, drops to its lowest point of 74.5 at 60 days out, edges back to 75.8 at 30 days, rises to 87.8 at seven days, and reaches 100.0 the day before departure. The 60-day mark is the cheapest booking time across the seven Chennai routes.

The network index follows a flatter path: 88.1 at 90 days, 86.1 at 60 days, 86.6 at 30 days, 91.0 at seven days, and 100.0 the day before. The difference between Chennai and the network is most visible in that 60-day trough: Chennai fares sit at 74.5 against the network's 86.1 at that point.

All seven of the seven routes into Chennai show fares that are cheaper at 30 days than the day before.

Which route punishes last-minute booking most?

The Ahmedabad to Chennai route carries the starkest penalty for waiting. Its fare-time index at 30 days is 62.7, meaning a day-before booking costs 59.5 per cent more than a 30-day booking on that route. Ahmedabad to Chennai has three flights per day, making it a relatively thin connection.

At the other end, the Bengaluru to Chennai route shows an index of 95.3 at 30 days, so a day-before booking costs only 4.9 per cent more than booking 30 days ahead. That route has 15 flights per day, the busiest of the seven routes in this data.

How this data is built

The fare-time index is constructed by recording advertised fares for multiple departure dates at different booking horizons, setting each route's day-before fare at 100, and expressing all other booking times as a number relative to that. This means the index compares what different departure dates cost when quoted at different booking times, not what one flight cost as its own date approached. The percentages come from the tracker's fare-time index, which is built over a longer window than a single morning.

About this data

These are advertised fares and medians across routes, not what any passenger finally paid, and a quote visible on one morning can move. All fares were captured on the morning of 4 November 2026. The data does not record which airline charged a fare, so it cannot say who sets these prices. Fare data was not available in this capture for Mumbai to Pune and Pune to Mumbai. Flight counts move between captures, so how busy a route is should be read as approximate.

The seven Chennai routes, taken together, show a booking curve that diverges from the national pattern at almost every horizon, with the widest gap appearing at 60 days out where Chennai's index of 74.5 sits well below the network's 86.1, and the Ahmedabad to Chennai route, with its 59.5 per cent day-before premium, anchors the far end of that range while the heavily served Bengaluru to Chennai route, at 4.9 per cent, sits at the other.

TOI-DPA Airline Price Index is a joint initiative of The Times of India and Decimal Point Analytics.

Source: Decimal Point Analytics Airline Price Index