What HAPPENED to Farecast?
 

I mean, common microsoft.

I tested this product back in the pre beta days, I thought it was GREAT and it opened up a new dawn in the age of informed airfare ticket purchases.

Then, it got bought by MSFT. That was okay, they kept it separate. Product only continued to get better.

Then, it got integrated into their search engine, PRE bing. Okay, it was still the same things.

Now, it su..kcs . The "prediction" is sort of still there. "we are confident prices will go HIGHER or LOWER" but no more data is there.

There USED to be actual Price data, and a price graph showing DATES and PRICES in $$ for the fare for the flights you were looking at. The PREDICTION used to show 65% confidence that prices will RISE or FALL more than 25$, xyy. 25% confident stay the same, etc.

It was QUITE an indicator and after booking more than 30 trips a YEAR the engine proved to be very valuable indeed and ACCURATE most importantly.

But now, it appears that those DATA are gone. What gives.

I just took a look at it, and it still appears to have the same info. Just a little different.

I don't seem to find the same info, it just shows me ONE number 7-day prediction, 90% confident that fares will fall.

Not more data than that. R u seeing something else?

Still there.

http://www.bing.com/travel/about/howAirPredictions.do

As an example, start here: http://www.bing.com/travel/flight/fl...ph&o=SEA&e=LAS

You can see the prices on the graph above.

Or click on the price for the first item in the list, then click on the volatility rating (for the one above, it's currently showing "high volatility").

There you can see the percentages and $ amounts.

Seems kinda buried now. I'm guessing it's because most people didn't want that level of detail? I can't recall what farecast was like.

thanks OTTM, but the first link is just an FAQ, and the second link shows for me NO DATA? do you SEE a graph? or is it all just empty like the ones I see? And, this link is not accessible from the regular fare listing pages for me. I have to go through the FAQ which is just static to get to the display which is now totally empty

http://www.bing.com/travel/?cid=homenav&FORM=Z9LH9

Go to the "Flexible?" section.

Pick a route (I'm picking SEA-LAS).

Now you get a graph.

Click on a dollar amount.

Now you get a page with a bunch of fares. Near the top of the page, on the right side, is an image of a graph with the heading "Fare history". (Well, it's not working right now...it says there's no price history available, but that's a temporary glitch because it worked great last night :))

If that's what you're doing and you don't see either graph pop up, please describe the steps you are following.

not the same thing, that is a grid of ON WHICH DATES the fares are cheaper - and what they are, not the historical information about YOUR dates, specific dates and WHAT has happened to the pricing over time.

I would imagine that this would kill the ALERTS function as well, since one sets and ALERT and an AMOUNT if it goes up or down, one gets the alert.

But this graph ain't it.

Are you possibly using Firefox browser with the NoScript add-on?

NoScript will block some information unless you manually approve it...sometimes I forget to approve and wonder why most of a web page is blank.

I think the info you are talking about is still there.

So, I checked for any script blocking, turned everything off. Didn't help. Tried another browser, with no ad blocking, and it still doesn't show. I've emailed the company to see what is up?

Farecast completely emliminated
 

Microsoft has killed all the most amazing features of Farecast and dumbed it down into a totally unremarkable flight search engine. Why not just use Kayak.com? Microsoft really killed an amazing product. There are almost no remnant features from the original Farecast product. This is utterly depressing.