What is the Data Quality Index?

The data quality index is a field included in the aircraft utilisation report that indicates how complete the ADS-B flight tracking data is for a given aircraft in a given month.

How is it measured?
The data quality index is expressed as a decimal value between 0 and 1:

• 1.0 — both takeoff and landing were successfully recorded for every tracked flight that month.
• 0.0 — takeoff and/or landing data is missing entirely.
• Values in between reflect partial completeness, where some flights were fully tracked and others were not.

Why does this matter?

A high quality index gives you confidence that the ADS-B tracking captured a full and accurate picture of the aircraft's activity for that month. A lower value signals that some flight events were not recorded, which may affect the reliability of the cycle count for that period.

When interpreting utilisation figures, it is good practice to review the data quality index alongside the cycle count. A cycle figure accompanied by a quality index below 1.0 should be treated with appropriate caution.

For further technical detail on the methodology, please refer to the Aircraft Utilisation (Monthly, OEM & ADS-B Based) documentation.

How do whitelisting and the quality index relate to each other?

These are two independent assessments, and it is important not to conflate them:

• Whitelisting determines whether an aircraft's ADS-B data is trusted enough to be included in the utilisation metric at all — it is a pass/fail gate based on comparison with the OEM data, OR on the flight path consistency. 
• The data quality index measures how complete the ADS-B tracking was for a specific month — it is a continuous score that applies within the whitelisted dataset.

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