Google Flights today is releasing a new feature that will help travelers better determine the right time to book. Rolling out this week, the company is
Airline ticket prices do resemble futures or options contracts a bit, though, in that they have a relationship to a certain date, and once past that date they are worthless. Furthermore, futures contracts on commodities (like FCOJ, right, Winthorpe?) are also subject to catastrophic yearly weather events that can wipe out a whole crop.
I think its naive to assume the Quants can’t model airline prices given the massive amount of historical data ITA and Google have.
Airline ticket prices do resemble futures or options contracts a bit, though, in that they have a relationship to a certain date, and once past that date they are worthless. Furthermore, futures contracts on commodities (like FCOJ, right, Winthorpe?) are also subject to catastrophic yearly weather events that can wipe out a whole crop.
I think its naive to assume the Quants can’t model airline prices given the massive amount of historical data ITA and Google have.
They can model the airline prices.
What they can’t do is predict how they will change in response to customers having the data now.