Farecast Deals site launches
Josh Lowensohn Former Senior Writer
Josh Lowensohn joined CNET in 2006 and now covers Apple. Before that, Josh wrote about everything from new Web start-ups, to remote-controlled robots that watch your house. Prior to joining CNET, Josh covered breaking video game news, as well as reviewing game software. His current console favorite is the Xbox 360.
Farecast, an airline ticket prediction and purchasing service, has launched a new Deals section that helps people find the best prices on tickets within a 90-day window. Unlike the recently launched Fare Guard, the Deals section is completely free and competes with other discount travel sites like TravelZoo and CheapTickets to aggregate flights that sell for a fraction of their typical cost. The service is currently limited to 38 major airports in the United States.
The search results are separated by the best deals, last-minute flights, weekend and weeklong flights, and flights for families. There's also a section for the best deals nationwide to recommend to friends or family members elsewhere. Each deal has an arrow icon that tells you what's happening to the fare's price in the near future, along with a recommendation for or against a purchase.
The defining difference between Farecast Deals and other deals sites is content aggregation. Whereas other sites can get their deals from tipsters and marketers, Farecast actually populates them from its own data. Farecast claims it would take someone "50,000 individual searches" to find the deals they do, and that's just for one city.