Patent ID: 7346520

Claim:
A method in a computing system for providing information on airline tickets to customers, the method comprising: providing information about prices for airline tickets that were previously offered to customers for airline flights between origins and destinations for multiple airlines; analyzing the provided information to predict price trends for airline tickets between origins and destinations; receiving a request from a customer for pricing information relating to desired airline flights between a desired origin and a desired destination for a desired departure date; when a predicted price trend indicates that a future price will be lower than a current price for a desired airline flight, offering to sell an airline ticket for that desired airline flight to the customer at an offered price that is between the current price and the future price; and when the customer accepts the offer, purchasing on behalf of the customer the airline ticket for that desired airline flight after the price drops below the offered price; and when a predicted price trend indicates that a future price will not be lower than the current price for the desired airline flights, advising the customer that a future price will likely not be lower.