I came across a PDF version of an article printed in Caltech’s Engineering & Science titled “The Price Is Right Mysterious” which discusses some basic economic algorithms for various items such as computers, flights, groceries, etc. I’ve always had a minor interest in Economics, and of course I like to save money, so I found this article to be pretty interesting.
I think the best boilerplate piece of advice in the article is on purchasing plane tickets is the following paragraph:
My main advice for buying airline tickets is to always book more than a month in advance, as prices rise in the last month—especially during the last two weeks, when our data show that they go up by $70 on average. Flexibility in the time of day in which you travel and the airport from which you fly can be worth 50 percent. And finally, even if you’re committed to flying on a particular flight with a particular airline, it still pays to search if you’ve got two months before the flight takes off. Check the price every day, and if it falls by 20 percent, book it. A saving of 20 percent simply by monitoring the price on Orbitz for two weeks is an enormous return on invested time.
I’ve pretty much always bought plane tickets at least a couple of months in advance when possible, so overall I’d have to agree with his observations.
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