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this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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Google has an advantage, though, because they bought ITA several years ago, which runs the main database that several major carriers use to schedule flights. Their data is not limited to Google searches, they have all the historical pricing in their database for every possible flight.
That does not make any difference. The act of making the information available changes what will happen in the future. The past becomes a very bad guide.
It's the same sort of thing as with high frequency trading. Quants find a way to profit off particular market movements and in doing so, change the way the market moves. They have to keep updating their models to stay ahead. The difference for Google and flight prices is they don't get new information every microsecond, they can only update on an annual cycle. I don't see how they can possibly make a good job of it.
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.