Cheap Travel Guide

I have found an airfare search engine site that is highly impressive and a very welcome new approach to finding a flight. Farecast is an independent web site you can use to research airline fares between 75 US cities. It’s still in Beta (test) form but looks to be working fine with only a couple of minor bugs I experienced.

This is not an online booking site like Expedia. It’s more of a search engine specifically for airline flights. However, there are links directly to each airline’s web site reservation page so you can book directly with the airline. In case you are not aware, booking flights online will save you money compared to calling the airlines and booking with one of their agents.

Note that Farecast is free of charge for you to use. They have revenue from pay per click advertising, and it would not surprise me if the airlines pay them a small fee for each booking.

I found the search function very easy to use and the results came up quickly. Once in a while, the system will “hang” and the results never show. Just click another tab or the browser back button and then return to what you were looking for. Each time I did that, the results came up quickly.

There is an intriguing feature called Fare Prediction as shown in the illustration above. However, it does not always appear, notably if airfares have been stable recently on the particular route you are researching. If it does appear for your search, it will show if the lowest fare is likely to rise or drop over the next seven days.

Also, there is a feature called Fare History which charts the lowest fare observed each day for your trip, up to 90 days ago. In other words, it’s as if you would have searched for your trip every day and plotted the lowest fare actually available. All this is based on more than 90 billion airfare observations based on real pricing and availability.

Airports in this region which are included in the database so far are: Burlington VT, Boston MA, Manchester NH, and Albany NY. Montreal is not yet listed.

One of the things I like best about this web site is that you don’t have to specify dates of travel. That’s always been a pet peeve of mine when dealing with other travel search web sites. Sometimes I just want to know which are the cheapest (or most expensive) times to travel to a particular destination. Farecast has solved this issue. If you are flexible with your schedule, or if you are just curious about how much flight costs can vary, you can research fare history between two airports.

The more I delve into this site, the more features and usability I discover. It is quite an amazing achievement. Please note that I have no connection with this web site and will not receive any compensation for mentioning it. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

(c) 2006 Jeff Connor Grunberg Haus

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