Flight Status From Live.com

Sunshine — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 11:33:27 GMT

Ian Moulster posted about a handy feature in Live Search: flight status. Flight status? Yea, as long as you know the flight number you can enter it on Live Search and the status will be shown right below the sponsored sites. As example we took the British Airways 10, ba10:

Cool huh? You can even track the flight in real time (currently only available for flights originating or arriving within the United States, Canada and Europe), via FlightStats.com, by clicking the “Track this flight in real time” link. As you can see in the screenshot above the data is provided by Farecast, which was acquired by Microsoft and integrated into Live Search last year.

Farecast can be used to find and determine when to buy airline tickets for a specific trip at the best price. It tells you if the current price is a good one by predicting if the price will go up or down later on. See the Farecast DEMO by Satya Nadella at Advance08, or Steven Weitz’s explanation here.

Unfortunately the predictions are only available from most major US and Canadian cities, so it’s pretty pointless to use it for searching flights if you live anywhere else. But hey, it’s still in beta….

Back to Flight Status: as with any feature on Live Search, “Flight Status” may or may not work in your country. Let us know if it works for you.

MSN and Farecast.com Launch Free Airfare Predictions, Planning Tools

Darren Straight — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 05:40:00 GMT

MSNand Farecast.com, the airfare prediction Web site, have today announced an agreement in which MSN will offer its users free airfare predictions and planning tools on the MSN Travel Channel. The addition of Farecast’s innovative technology and planning tools on MSN Travel will hopefuly empower its millions of monthly users to make more informed decisions when planning and shopping for travel.This agreement marks the first distribution deal for Farecast to bring its unique travel technology and planning tools to a broader consumer audience. Farecast will be joining the existing list of premier travel content partners on MSN, including Expedia, Frommer’s and Travel+Leisure.

We are thrilled to partner with MSN,” said Hugh Crean, president and chief executive officer of Farecast. “This agreement is further validation of the value of Farecast’s predictive technology to help people make smarter buying decisions and be more empowered when shopping for travel. MSN is committed to delivering innovative content to its loyal customers, and we look forward to being a part of its growing travel channel.”

In addition to free airfare predictions, MSN Travel users will be able to access Farecast’s unique travel planning tools. With Farecast, MSN customers will be able to answer many trip-planning decisions, such as when and where they should travel, where they can afford to travel on their budget, and the best airfare deals from their home airport.

“Farecast is changing the way consumers shop for airfare by helping them answer the difficult question, ‘Should I buy now or wait?’ when shopping for an airfare,” said Jeff Dossett, executive producer and general manager at MSN. “Integrating Farecast’s unique airfare predictions and tools is part of our overall strategy to build out a rich set of innovative and differentiated content and services in travel and across all channels on the MSN media network.”

LiveSide - News blog : Farecast

Flight Status From Live.com

MSN and Farecast.com Launch Free Airfare Predictions, Planning Tools