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Airfare prediction site Farecast, fresh from weeks of generally good PR, is now live for public beta testing. No special logins required any longer. However, the site still only covers Boston and Seattle departures.

Reader Jeff took the site for an extensive spin, and wrote this thorough review of his experience:

Thanks again for the farecast invite. I’ve been meaning to write back to you with my thoughts, as I’ve spent some time looking at their website.

1) The whole thing is a bit pointless, in that they don’t have international travel. Is the gamble of saving ~30 dollars on a domestic flight worth it by waiting a week? I go to Ethiopia once or twice a year, where ticket purchasing can range hundreds of dollars. If I could get a forecast on this ticket price, that could be really
valuable.

2) It appears that their forecast is based on the previous few months of data. They should also be looking at annual sales issues. Reminds me of a Simpsons episode where Homer is bragging to the guys at the bar about what a wise investor he is… he invested in pumpkins, and he said he though they were going to peak in price right around mid November. Flash to the day after halloween and he has lost the family’s savings.

Annual factors? holidays, the summer rush, increase in oil prices over the summer, etc.

3) And finally, we need more than Boston and Seattle. Its great if you live in those places, but if you don’t? The website (which is in beta) indicates this is coming in the future, so it is hard to complain too much.

I did sort of use the site to buy tickets for me and my wife to travel out of Bradley airport, CT, to Columbus next month (Bradley being ~100 cheaper than Logan on average, and we are staying with friends who live 1/2 way between the two airports). I looked up what was predicted for Boston prices for the same time frame (they were going to get cheaper or stay the same), and therefore decided that we could wait on purchasing until we were more sure of our exact travel dates. Turns out we waited a couple of weeks, and the price actually dropped by $15. So it sort of worked.

I think in the end, assuming the service was available for where I lived, I would use it more as a way to predict the urgency in buying tickets- if the price is climbing quickly over the past couple of weeks, act now! But I don’t know if I would be willing to gamble on flight prices dropping if I saw the right flight connections, and a reasonable price.

tags: travel | air travel | farecast