Finding the right time to buy your plane ticket

Marketplace interviews Oren Etzioni, who developed data mining solution for predicting when to buy a plane ticket: The closer we get to the holidays, the higher airfares go. And we will pay them. But, timing isn't the only thing that we do wrong when it comes to picking a holiday flight.

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Flying somewhere this holiday season? The closer we get to the holidays, the higher airfares go. And we will pay them. But, timing isn't the only thing that we do wrong when it comes to picking a holiday flight. Steve Henn explains

Steve Henn: Who hasn't been there? You agonize over when to buy an airline ticket. And then finally you pull the trigger and prices plummet online. In 2002, that happened to Oren Etzioni.

Oren Etzioni: I was on an airplane on my way to my brother's wedding and I asked people seated next to me, 'How much did you pay for your ticket?' It turned out that they bought later than me and paid less.

The folks at the airline had just messed with the wrong guy. Etzioni is a computer science professor at the University of Washington.

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