Claude estimated for me a 1-in-100 to 1-in-1,000 chance of getting sick on a flight as a baseline. Let’s say 1-in-500. Ballparking the value of avoiding some sort of illness at $500, the baseline cost is $1. So then, if booking a later flight leads to a 20-100% decreased risk of illness, it doesn’t seem like it’d save more than a dollar or so in EV.
If you value avoiding illness at something higher like $5,000, then the expected savings are more like $10 or so, which maybe becomes worth it, although if you value avoiding illness that highly might be worth wearing a P100 mask or something, in which case the value of a later flight goes down to something more like $1, I’d guesstimate.
I might be unusually unlucky, but I get sick on more like 1 in 10 flights. Price-wise I don’t think middle-of-the-night flights are worth it for more mundane reasons (being awake all night has a 100% chance of ruining my next day), so for me it’s entirely about scheduling.
Assuming each sickness makes me sick for 10 days, would I rather pick a less convenient schedule or be sick for (on average) an additional 5 hours? It might depend on the trip but I usually don’t do much on my traveling-home days anyway, so it seems like I should at least travel home mid-day, even though I might be willing to travel out late to maximize vacation days (trade 5 hours of sickness for one vacation day).
Claude estimated for me a 1-in-100 to 1-in-1,000 chance of getting sick on a flight as a baseline. Let’s say 1-in-500. Ballparking the value of avoiding some sort of illness at $500, the baseline cost is $1. So then, if booking a later flight leads to a 20-100% decreased risk of illness, it doesn’t seem like it’d save more than a dollar or so in EV.
If you value avoiding illness at something higher like $5,000, then the expected savings are more like $10 or so, which maybe becomes worth it, although if you value avoiding illness that highly might be worth wearing a P100 mask or something, in which case the value of a later flight goes down to something more like $1, I’d guesstimate.
I might be unusually unlucky, but I get sick on more like 1 in 10 flights. Price-wise I don’t think middle-of-the-night flights are worth it for more mundane reasons (being awake all night has a 100% chance of ruining my next day), so for me it’s entirely about scheduling.
Assuming each sickness makes me sick for 10 days, would I rather pick a less convenient schedule or be sick for (on average) an additional 5 hours? It might depend on the trip but I usually don’t do much on my traveling-home days anyway, so it seems like I should at least travel home mid-day, even though I might be willing to travel out late to maximize vacation days (trade 5 hours of sickness for one vacation day).