Pricing of airline tickets on India's busiest aviation route (New Delhi - Mumbai)

Abstract

This paper investigates how seasonality and advance booking influence airline ticket prices on the New Delhi - Mumbai route. We analyse three types of seasonality: We find that: 1) flights departing in the morning are more expensive than PM departure flights; 2) weekend flights are more expensive than weekday flights; 3) flights during the Diwali festival are more expensive. We also investigate how the advance booking window influences the airfares. Airfares increase as the advance booking duration decreases. Interestingly, the relative increase in airfares is greater on private airlines (Indigo, Jet Airways, and Spice Jet), compared to the government-managed Air India.