i was poking around on some website yesterday and i heard about this site that really might be the killer airline fare site. it's called farecast.com. here is what it does:

you give it departure and arrival cities and dates, as per any other search. it goes across a number of sites and gives you the best fare, as per any other search. however, it also shows a graph of the latest lowest fares, and based on its database it attempts to make a prediction as to whether the lowest fare available at this moment is the actual lowest fare possible. i searched for a flight to midway, and i was told to wait with 50% certainty. i searched for a flight into o'hare and was told to buy with 80% certainty.

that, my friends, is badass.

the fare history is cool now, but for a site like this to truly work they need a crapload of data; data that they don't really have yet. i'm fairly certain airlines aren't about to share price histories of tickets, so the good folks at farecast.com are going to have some fun grabbing data off of other searches (or whatever it is they do) and populating a massive, massive database.

right now it only works for flights from boston/seattle, which is fine by me, obviously.

the whole system is in "closed beta", which means if you go to their site and sign up it takes 2-3 days (or took 2-3 days for me) to get allowed in. of course, i have 25 invites that i can share, but if you aren't in the boston or seattle area, it won't be much more than a novelty for now.

i really hope this site succeeds. at the very least, exposing the arbitrary pricing history of airline tickets might make the airlines get in line. or, at least i can hope.

thanks for indulging me.