Now Reading: Flyers pay 120.5% more booking day before on Ahmedabad-Pune route
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Flyers pay 120.5% more booking day before on Ahmedabad-Pune route
The Story in Brief
Booking a flight a day before departure cost 120.5 per cent more on the Ahmedabad-Pune route than booking 30 days in advance, the steepest premium among 54 domestic routes analysed by the TOI-DPA Airline Price Index on 16 September 2026.
At the other end, the Bengaluru-Chennai route showed a premium of just 2.9 per cent for last-minute booking, while Mumbai-Delhi and Pune-Delhi also had narrow gaps. The index, a joint initiative of The Times of India and Decimal Point Analytics, sets each route's day-before fare at 100 and measures other booking times against it. On high-frequency corridors the fare curve was nearly flat, on routes with fewer daily flights it was steeper.
The data reflects advertised fares and medians from a single morning, not individual passenger tickets, and does not identify which airline set each price. The figures are derived from the index's longer-term calculation.
Indian Opinion Analysis
The TOI-DPA Airline Price Index reveals a structural divide in domestic pricing: on low-frequency routes like Ahmedabad-Pune, airlines charge a steep premium for last-minute bookings, whereas on high-frequency corridors like Mumbai-Delhi, the fare curve is nearly flat. This means travellers on thinner routes face a much stronger financial incentive to plan ahead, while those on busy routes gain little from early booking. The index, however, captures advertised medians from a single morning, not what any passenger actually paid, and does not identify which airline set each fare. The tracker’s longer-term calculation method leaves open how representative this snapshot is.
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com
This brief was synthesised by AI from the source linked above. Methodology and corrections.
