Try FareCompare.com As Your Next Fare Aggregator

I have been using FareCompare.com recently in hopes of finding a unique approach to fare searches. One of the cool tools on the site is what is called the Getaway Map. Plug in your departure city and it will search for the lowest fares according to geographical destination–such as US/Canada, Asia, Europe, etc. Its a nice, easy to navigate layout and makes for some quick results. They also claim to be ‘one of the handful of companies worldwide who receive raw air ticket prices directly from the airlines’. Then if you are signed up on their email alert system, you will be notified minutes after the fare is released to them, presumably giving you a jump on that cheap airfare before your seat partner.

I just added it to my daily RSS feed and was able to get a quick heads-up on some great fares for an upcoming European trip planned for this summer.

But this site is most useful if you have a specific route in mind. They provide data such as ‘historical lows’ for the specific city pair as well as information about the lowest fare during the previous 30 days (displayed in a convenient graphical format), a volatility graph to see longer term trends for this fare and a chart showing the lowest fare for each of the previous 12 months including a star rating to help you size up how your current fare compares.