TOI-DPA Airfare Index: A flight price tracker that will help you plan trips better

Is there a pattern to how airline ticket prices change? What factors make the key difference? Is it the time of the day, the day of the week, or how far in advance you’re booking? The TOI-DPA Index seeks to answer these questions, not just overall but also specifically for individual sectors.

Overall index: how prices have moved since April-end

Airline Price Inflation Index tracks daily changes in domestic airfares across selected Indian routes, weighted by passenger traffic or seat capacity. It highlights airfare inflation, demand patterns, pricing strategies and market sentiment.

When booking was done: The effect of early booking

Fare Timing Index measures how airfares change with booking time—comparing prices booked 1, 7, 30, 60 and 90 days before departure. It highlights last-minute premiums, optimal booking windows and airfare affordability trends.

The sweet spot is around 30 days overall — but some routes reward you for booking much earlier

By departure time: When in the day does it cost least to fly?

This measures how fares have moved. Depending on the time of departure of the flight, the patterns vary across sectors. In some, the time of day makes little difference; for others, it could cut your cost by almost half.

By day of week: Are some days cheaper to fly than others?

Once again, while Saturdays are overall the cheapest days to fly, and Fridays the most expensive, patterns can be very different depending on where you are flying from and where you’re headed.

The TOI-DPA Airline Price Index is a joint initiative of The Times of India and Decimal Point Analytics that tracks airfare trends across airline routes connecting India’s eight major metros: Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Pune. The index is based on economy-class airfare data captured daily from publicly available fare listings on Google Flights and analysed using Decimal Point Analytics’ proprietary methodology.

The analysis covers 56 domestic routes and tracks fares across multiple booking windows, including 1, 7, 30, 60 and 90 days before departure. Multiple fare observations are collected across airlines on each route, allowing the index to reflect prevailing market prices while minimising the impact of outlier fares.

Route-level movements are aggregated using seat-capacity-based weights so that busier routes have proportionately greater influence on the overall index. The TOI-DPA Airline Price Index measures changes in airfare levels over time, while the Fare Timing Index assesses the impact of booking timing by comparing fares across different advance-purchase windows.

Together, the indices provide a data-driven view of airline pricing trends, seasonal demand patterns, and the potential savings or premiums associated with different booking decisions.