Originally Posted by
aktchi
First, ITA requires you to have an idea of the dates you'd be traveling; I just want to know what are the best fares filed.
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I'd like to see if EF's user interface can be aligned with those needs.
I can certainly understand if this is not affordable. Not knowing their business details, I had no idea, but I do understand that everyone has their budget and bills.
However, the argument that something sort of similar though not quite the same is available at some free site elsewhere, which may have been in the process of diluting public access, makes no sense.
The back-end processes to get what you are looking for are
completely different. EF queries the GDSes in real-time. They don't have access to raw fare data. To know the best fares filed, you either need access to the raw fare data as mentioned previously or you'd need to do many hundreds of queries to the GDS. It is not feasible to program EF to do this--it's not just a matter of automating some tasks, it's like asking a motorscooter to do the work of an 18-wheeler. They're two completely different things.
What you're looking for is what was formerly supplied by
FareCompare.com before they shut it down (for whatever reason). That was one of my go-to sites, and there really isn't anything out there to replace it and likely won't be, given the cost to obtain the data.