This Formula Will Tell You If Your Flight Is Profitable
Flights are getting cheaper this year , but prices vary depending on destination. To find out if the flight is really profitable, Louis Maicot, a data analyst at Adobe, came up with a simple formula.
The formula is pretty simple: multiply the round trip miles by $ 0.032, then add $ 230.
As MarketWatch explains, if you’re flying between New York and Los Angeles, it’s only 5,640 miles. Plug that into the formula and you end up with $ 410.48, which means anything below $ 410 (taxes and fees included) is a pretty good deal. For international flights, multiply the round trip miles by $ 0.08 and then add $ 200.
Maikot explains how he came up with the formula:
I calculated the average price that all participants in the data sample pay based on how many days they bought tickets (up to 300 days). Then I divided the average price for each day by the total average price and did this for thousands upon thousands of flights. I was left with the weighted average of the final curve.
Simply put, the number you get gives you a rough idea of what the bulk of airline ticket prices have been in recent years. MarketWatch explains the formula in more detail and also includes a calculator to help you do math calculations, so check out the full post at the link below.
Travel Report 2016: A Story Behind The Numbers | Adobe via MarketWatch