Use Farecast To Find Flight Deals (or just fly Southwest)

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1. Erik Kalviainen
   

   May 26th, 2006 at 8:56 am

   I like the predictive aspects to the site. Is there anything else they offer over Expedia/Yahoo! Travel/Travelocity?

   Waiting for a beta invite….

2. leunamiur
   

   May 26th, 2006 at 9:23 am

   http://leunamiur.blogspot.com/

3. nien
   

   May 26th, 2006 at 9:25 am

   “what I’d really like to see is our airlines pull their collective head out of their collective ass and adopt a pricing model that makes sense.” holler my brother.

4. Bobby
   

   May 26th, 2006 at 9:28 am

   Michael,

   Regarding this comment:

   “what I’d really like to see is our airlines pull their collective head out of their collective ass and adopt a pricing model that makes sense.”

   I would like to see what model you would adopt in the airline industry. I would go back in your blog a few reviews and read up on the Super Oyster model. Variable pricing allows airlines to make more money (revenue not profit…ha) than they would with a fairly flat pricing model. Although the pricing model is very difficult to understand, it is one that is required to compete within the industry itself. Adopt another model, and you will be toast in the airline industry currently in the US (RyanAir is an interesting model, but no one here is yet willing to adopt that model).

   Care to start an airline on your own? I would bet it wouldn’t work out well for you.

   Bobby

5. Bob Goldsmith
   

   May 26th, 2006 at 9:29 am

   How accurate are the predictions regarding the included airlines?

6. Gerald Buckley
   

   May 26th, 2006 at 9:38 am

   Michael -

   I was once the Director of Internet Marketing at one of the major car rental companies. The airlines pricing models are overly complex and reflect the ball of spaghetti they have managed to weave over the years. I think THEY’D like to see a simpler more streamlined pricing method. But, they’re not all going to move in unison in that direction. First mover gets creamed as someone else noted above.

   As for Southwest… They do their own deal and report quarter after quarter profits where the others don’t (Note: I didn’t say can’t… I said don’t). Southwest is smart like a fox. They intentionally drive traffic TO their site without the added reach of SideStep or Farecast or anyone else. They’re fine without it. And, as a result, you KNOW where to go if you want to check Southwest prices. Inconvenient? Maybe a little. But, good for Southwest’s business model.

   Orbitz is about as close as your going to see the airlines come to competing and THAT didn’t even play out as well as expected for them in the end…

   Farecast and SideStep are GREAT tools. Use them all the time. Just don’t expect to see SWA participate. They don’t want to and they don’t need to (just look at those herds of people piling into their planes! Self included).

7. peter abilla
   

   May 26th, 2006 at 10:04 am

   what about mobissimo? i haven’t seen a review of their service…

8. David Ciccarelli
   

   May 26th, 2006 at 10:13 am

   From a graphic design point of view, I would have expected the colour scheme on the ‘Wait’ and ‘Buy Now’ icons to be reversed. If I’m to wait for something, I expected to see amber or red, much like a stop light. Anyone agree?

9. Tom
   

   May 26th, 2006 at 10:48 am

   Actually, the site isn’t really predicting anything. All fares are published by the airlines 330 days in advance, and includes the from/to dates that they are valid. Therefore, if you know that the lower fare is only valid for x more days, then it goes up, you can easily say “buy now”, and visa-versa.

10. Peter
    

    May 26th, 2006 at 10:49 am

    adopt a pricing model that makes sense

    no institution is going to help us undermine it. the opening of fare information would be bad for business, so the airlines will work to stop it from happening for as long as possible. who needs customers when you own Congress, anyways?

11. Dave
    

    May 26th, 2006 at 11:03 am

    @Tom, no. 9

    If what you said is true, why does the price of the same ticket on the same flight in the same class vary by up to $50 on 2 consecutive days? Airlines that I’ve quoted with are obviously using some sort of capacity, time-of-day, # of days prior to flight algorithm to sell the most seats for the greatest price.

    I have a PDF that I’ve saved over the past month or so called “PriceIsRight.pdf” that discusses airline pricing models. Unfortunately I can’t find the source site. It is however a scan of the magazine “Engineering & Science No. 3, 2005″, page 32, and the article is titled “The Price is Right Mysterious” by R. Preston McAfee. See specifically the graph at the top of page 36.

    Check it out if you can find it– offers some insight into the turbulence in airline ticket pricing.

12. Andrew
    

    May 26th, 2006 at 11:30 am

    You can find the article Dave mentioned at http://pr.caltech.edu/periodicals/ eands/articles/LXVIII_3/McAfee.pdf

13. Jay
    

    May 26th, 2006 at 1:42 pm

    I have to concur with Dave. I was looking for prices on the exact same flight on 2 consecutive days (just forgot to save the itineraries) and to my surprise, saw the price go DOWN by 25%. I was very happy I had procrastinated!

14. Ken Rossi : CivilNetizen.com
    

    May 26th, 2006 at 2:29 pm

    the museum of modern betas has a list of the top 100 betas as per delicious favorites…. and how many have come out of beta do you ask?…. 4……

15. dima
    

    May 26th, 2006 at 10:41 pm

    can i have an invite, plz?! newyorkdimka at (google’s mail) dot com

16. Larry Goodwin
    

    May 26th, 2006 at 11:33 pm

    Carro usado invitacion para eso por favor?

17. Avinash
    

    May 26th, 2006 at 11:57 pm

    Very nice write-up. I agree with many of your comments. I don’t normally fly Southwest, but I didn’t realise they could be that cheap.

    Any chance of an invite?

18. Jim
    

    May 27th, 2006 at 12:22 am

    I received an invite tonight and I’ve got to admit, very cool site. I actually did a test to check Southwest against Farecast for multiple routes and found that it Southwest had the low price maybe 25%. This might have to do with the fact that cheapest flights usually sellout on Southwest (Internet Specials).

19. Stuart MacDonald
    

    May 27th, 2006 at 4:45 am

    “Farecast, a Seattle-based travel start-up, is in private beta. I was invited to try it out, and I did. On the whole, it’s pretty good - but I am fearful that beyond the relatively small amount of whiz-bang buzz their “hook” adds, they are really just another meta-search site. Albeit a clean…”

20. Ty
    

    May 27th, 2006 at 5:28 am

    Could I have an invite please? (emerick7[at]connecttime[dot]net) — thanks!

21. Jon
    

    May 27th, 2006 at 5:32 am

    Southwest is a right wing company and a major supporter of the Bushes.

22. ericlong
    

    May 27th, 2006 at 7:14 am

    I would love an invite as well from any one willing

23. ericlong
    

    May 27th, 2006 at 7:15 am

    oops I forgot an e-mail address. you can use

    airplanejunkie \/at/\iamfast.com

24. http://financenstuff.blogspot.com/
    

    May 27th, 2006 at 7:19 am

    Beats having to check all dates on all sites. Think it’s a great idea.

25. abmad
    

    May 27th, 2006 at 10:12 am

    Wow like an invite too.. awake356|at|(googles email service)|dot|com

26. mrrbob
    

    May 27th, 2006 at 10:21 am

    “# Jon

    May 27th, 2006 at 5:32 am

    Southwest is a right wing company and a major supporter of the Bushes.”

    Thanks Jon
    I will make sure to give them my business as much as possible now.

27. Jeff Haemer
    

    May 28th, 2006 at 10:35 am

    Be nice if they had a readily-apparent email address to send to. Their sign-up process has a bug (it doesn’t accept gmail-style “plus” addresses), which I’d report for them if I could. I can wait until I have an invitation to report it, but it’d be useful info for them now.

28. Suren
    

    May 29th, 2006 at 4:55 pm

    Can someone send me an invite? Thanks. surenraveendran at gmail.com

29. Dennis Howlett
    

    May 29th, 2006 at 7:27 pm

    Farecast is wandering into dangerous waters. The ‘fear’ that prices might go up may be attractive to some, but if you’re a regular traveller to/from certain destinations, it’s possible to game the system without any sophisticated tools.

    But no-one can beat the low cost airlines like SW or, in our case, Easyjet/RyanAir. These companies have smart business models, supported by lean systems that are very difficult to game. In other words, they don’t play by ‘the rules.’

    Isn’t that what innovation is supposed to be about?

30. jonto
    

    May 30th, 2006 at 4:18 am

    @Dave No. 11

    I found the pdf that you mentioned. It can be downloaded here.
    http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~mc.....sRight.pdf

31. Different Jon
    

    May 30th, 2006 at 11:02 am

    I hate SWA. Assign me a seat already.

    Will gladly pay more for a “major”.

32. arjun prabhu
    

    May 31st, 2006 at 12:28 pm

    Sounds great. Can anyone send me an invite?

33. kaiju
    

    June 2nd, 2006 at 12:03 pm

    What a worhtless site.

34. jeriann fleres
    

    June 7th, 2006 at 12:08 pm

    may i please have an invite. thank you

35. Doug Sherrets
    

    June 19th, 2006 at 5:13 pm

    Hi Mike,

    I think Farecast in some ways is designed to fail if too many people use the service. Here are my thoughts, which are also located on my blog here:

    http://www.mrmarkets.com/2006/.....t_ser.html

    If Farecast serves millions of people, it is designed to fail

    Farecast could absolutely change the way people think about buying airline tickets online. It is only available in Seattle and Boston right now, but once it rolls out to all cities, you will be able to see historical pricing for routes at a given time of the year. This is great because airlines are quite predictable in the pricing moves they make. Observe the pricing graph, and you can easily tell if it is a good time to buy a given ticket, or best to wait a few days.

    The problem here is that Farecast is designed to be a victim of its success. That is, if everyone uses Farecast, then the airlines have a serious problem because their pricing schemes will no longer work. The result? Airlines will change how they price, which will cause Farecast to become a whole lot less good at predicting prices.

    What can Farecast do to avoid this? If they have meaningful patents, they can prevent competitors like Flyspy from making the same information available to everyone. If that is the case, then Farecast could sell subscriptions. By limiting it to people most willing to pay, the impact of Farecast on revenues would likely not be great enough to force the airlines to change their pricing policies.

    However, as Mike Arrington points out, it may be in the best interests of consumers that websites like Farecast exist. Why? Because if airlines are pushed, they may come up with a simpler pricing structure.

    Funniest of all is that Southwest is not on Farecast, often has the best rates, has the simplest pricing of all and has been profitable for years while other airlines have declared bankruptcy multiple times.

    Go figure.

36. jrhawk
    

    June 26th, 2006 at 12:12 pm

    Could you send me an invite?

37. www.smart-travel.tk
    

    January 26th, 2007 at 12:20 am

    This is indeed a great travel site, but it lacks integration with other aspects of travel. We invite you to try:

    http://www.smart-travel.tk

    Intuitive and fast search tool for flights, hotels, visa info, weather, etc.