Where can I find data on average fares using the Airline Origin and Destination Survey (DB1B)?

Answer

Office of Aviation Analysis

Questions? Contact Randall Keizer

Office of Aviation Analysis
1200 New Jersey Ave, SE
Washington, DC 20590
United States


Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS)

  • Airline Origin and Destination Survey (DB1B) - click on "Aviation" then "Airline Origin & Destination Survey" - a 10% sample of airline tickets from reporting carriers including origin, destination and other itinerary details of passengers transported. As of July 2025, carriers will begin reporting 40% of their tickets, rather than 10%.

  • Origin and Destination Survey: DB1BMarket (click "Download"): average fares by airport pairs (or city pairs) 

  1. Select the following fields:

    • Origin

    • OriginCityMarketID

    • Dest

    • ​DestCityMarketID

    • Passengers

    • MktFare

  2. Filter:

    • Geography (by either origin or destination state),

    • Year

    • Quarter (Note: you can only download one quarter at a time)

  3. Filter out fares below a certain value (e.g. $50) to eliminate flights that just contain taxes and fees but no actual base fare. This is how BTS calculates the average fares. 

  4. Download data and multiply Passengers x Market Fare for each row to get Total Fare

  5. Sum the Passengers column and sum your newly created Total Fare column

  6. Divide the Total Fare by the total number of Passengers

  • Last Updated Aug 26, 2024
  • Views 5279
  • Answered By Victoria Milam

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