=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SFGate. The original article can be found on SFGate.com here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/c/a/2007/03/01/DDGA7OC8CE= 1.DTL --------------------------------------------------------------------- Thursday, March 1, 2007 (SF Chronicle) Where to go online before going anywhere Ed Perkins Buy an airline ticket now or wait? That's one of the questions I get most frequently from my Q-and-A column on smartertravel.com. Although the Internet has provided you with more airfare data than you've ever had, it still can't answer this question. There are actually two elements to the "when" question: when to fly, and when to buy. You can answer the when-to-fly question fairly accurately: Almost all of the big online Web sites such as Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity, as well as individual airline sites, offer flexible fare search options to check for potentially lower prices if you can change your flights dates a few days or a week. And just a few such searches can give you longer-term seasonal fare variations. The more troublesome "when" question is when to buy your ticket. My usual answer is that buying an airline ticket is like buying a major appliance: The best time to buy is during one of the frequent airfare sales. But I can't fully answer you when you ask, "The fare quoted today for my trip next summer is $389 -- should I buy now or wait for a better deal?" If there is no current sale airfare for your travel dates, my usual answer is that if you're looking more than three or four months further ahead, you're probably better off waiting. But that's strictly guesswork, not hard data. Farecast, a new online service, is trying to take the guesswork out of t= he "when to buy" question. Its site, www.farecast.com, is now up in a beta version, meaning it still has some tweaking left to be done, but it's ready for use by consumers. Here are the highlights: Full forecasts are currently available to/from = 75 of the busiest domestic airports, for a total of some 2,000 individual airport pairs, for trips of two to eight nights with departure dates within 90 days. When you enter your origin and destination cities and travel dates, Farecast shows you: -- The lowest current fares on every important U.S. airline other than Southwest. -- A graph of the lowest fare sold within the past 60 days. -- Its prediction of whether today's lowest fare is likely to increase, decrease or remain the same for the next seven days. If either of the airports you enter is not one of the 75, Farecast provides the same search for the lowest available fare and provides the same great tables and graphs, but not the forecast. Lowest fares shown apply to seats actually available, not low list prices that may not be available on a given flight. If you want to buy, the display links you directly with the site of the airline offering the best price and schedule to meet your needs. And you can lock in the quoted price for a week by paying an extra $9.95. Farecast also provides a wealth of supporting data and graphics, includi= ng how fares compare by airline, number of stops and times of day. It also offers a flexible option to show fares before and after the dates you originally entered. In its current version, Farecast certainly doesn't answer everyone's "when" question. It doesn't provide forecasts for lots of domestic routes or any international routes. If you're heading to/from a city with multiple airports, you have to search each airport-to-airport route separately. But the biggest weakness is that the price-change forecast covers only t= he following week. Travelers who send me questions are usually concerned with changes over several months, or at least several weeks, not just one week. Still, Farecast is an extremely important first step. Even if the forecasts don't extend more than a week, the historical data at least give you some indication of where today's fares are, compared with where they've been. I would certainly recommend a visit to www.farecast.com for any travelers wondering when to buy their next air ticket. And Farecast will undoubtedly gain more functionality over coming months. E-mail syndicated columnist Ed Perkins at eperkins@xxxxxxxxx -----------= ----------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2007 SF Chronicle