Bargain bagging: that's the ticket

Even when you get scientific about getting a good deal, there's an element of luck involved
  • The Observer,
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As if we didn't have enough dilemmas. Some ticket prices, such as those for the theatre, get cheaper as the date nears; others, such as those for flights, soar. It's a complex balance of supply, demand and our ability to stick to plans. Fortunately, as we reveal elsewhere, two academics have now struggled through the sums for us and the answer is: precisely eight weeks ahead is the optimum time to buy, for planes at least.

We are both blessed and cursed by modernity. Time was, you paid standard fares for planes, trains, ferries. Today, we can get great bargains by advance booking, but we have to feel lucky. Will there be a strike? An ash cloud? Some even less foreseeable calamity – a herd of migrating wildebeest halting the Heathrow Express? We belt and braces so much of life, but no one can tell us what happens tomorrow.

In all of the research, one mathematical formula can never be perfectly tabulated: our very human desire for a bargain versus knowing exactly when not to push parsimony too far. It's not rocket science: it's far more complex, and perhaps far more important, than that.

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