Between packing your suitcase to the nearest gram so as to avoid paying any stinging surcharges to wondering what happened to the complimentary bags of peanuts while you hurtle through the air, travelling by aeroplane is not quite as glamorous as it once was. But what does it take for the first leg of your travels to be the perfect flight?

Skyscanner, the flight booking website, crunched the numbers and formulated their own equation for the ideal flying experience, revealing what beleaguered airline travellers believe to be the optimum conditions for a safe and happy flight. Compiled from more than 2,000 passengers, the company quizzed them on variables such as punctuality and leg room, and came up with the perfect formula: (T+L – 30) P/100.

In case the last time you did that quite of equation was when the Junior Cert didn’t need reforming, here’s the explainer that lef Dr Eugenia Cheng, of the University of Sheffield, to come up with the formula:

No stranger to the red eye, George Hook was left perplexed by the formula, and so invited travel writer (and erstwhile mathematician) Philip Nolan to break it down for him. You can hear was Philip had to say below: