Airfare is one of the great unpredictables in travel. Sure there are well-known seasonal factors (Hawaii is most expensive over Christmas and Las Vegas is rock-bottom cheap in the sweltering summer months). Travelers forever have planned vacations around airline prices. But predicting airfare is about exact a science as astrology.
Enter Farecast, a new site that takes complex bits of airline data and gives you a way to predict airfare from point A to point B. Ah, the ease of knowing (approximately) how much your family vacation, wedding, weekend getaway with friends, or any group trip will cost (at least airfare).
John Battelle got a sneak preview of the site soon to launch later this year:
The basic premise is neat - Farecast pays attention to the market price of all airline fares out of particular cities (it only does Boston and Seattle for now) at all times (it uses an industry data feed that, unfortunately, does not include Southwest). It then uses this data to help forecast when the right time might be for you to buy your ticket (and get the best price). In short, it's a rip off detector for flights. Farecast leverages the power of data to put you back in charge, or at least more in charge.
Source: Boingboing.net
Of course, once you predict when and where you're going, planning any group trip is made easy with TripHub's free planning tools.
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