Big Data and Predictive Analysis when it comes to airfares
Posted By RichC on April 22, 2014
A post on the FiveThirtyEight.com blog by Kaiser Fung this past weekend analyzed the prediction of airfares on Kayak (after the removal of Microsoft’s Bing Travel’s Farecast in January 2014), left me wondering if the days of successful Big Data’s Predictive Analysis are disappearing?
According to my read on Fung’s selective airfare routes research, you would be hard pressed to consistently beat the “buying tickets tow weeks ahead of your scheduled departure.” His results were mixed when using the “Price Trend” buy advice. Below was his graph comparing several flights indicating where following the Kayak advice saved him money … and when it cost him money by waiting. Still the temptation to save the $200 on the NYC-BOS flight by waiting 5 days will probably keep many penny-pinchers like me still thinking we can save a buck.
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