Farecast has dropped the price of its new Fare Guard service from $9.95 to $3, but the change only lasts until February 1st.
With Fare Guard, airfare tracking site Farecast allows people to protect a low-priced airfare for one week. This gives travelers who are firming up travel plans the opportunity to continue to shop around without losing a good price if fares increase.
The site keeps its Fare Guard customers up to date via email. Fare Guard works as a short-term insurance policy against a fare increase. As they explain it on the site:
You can only redeem a Fare Guard if the lowest fare on the day you booked your trip is higher than your Guarded Price. To redeem, you must sign in to your account within 72 hours of booking and provide booking verification. After Farecast has confirmed your eligibility, we will send you a check for the redemption value.
Farecast provides an airfare prediction service for more than 75 airports. They base their predictions on historical pricing patterns, and suggesting buying or waiting depending on that information. All of the prices come from airline websites, and bookings go through those sites, not Farecast.
Available destination cities for fare information vary depending on the departure city. While the Murdok home airport in Lexington is not a Farecast departure city yet, Louisville’s Standiford Field and Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport are in the list.
Cincinnati has 22 destinations currently in Farecast, while Louisville has seven. Murdok fun fact: Guess which state Cincinnati Airport is in. The correct answer is Kentucky, not Ohio, which is why Cincinnati has the airport code CVG for Covington, KY.
Farecast allows visitors to nominate home airports and destinations that are not in the list yet, for future consideration.
Three bucks is a cheap bet to make that prices will change favorably in a week. It will be interesting to see if Farecast tries to maintain the $9.95 price after the beginning of February.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
