Personal cost minimization on air ticket purchase

This week, Time privdes a very interesting website to help customer to make the decision about 'To Buy or not to buy' air ticket.
http://www.farecast.com

Etzioni's site Farecast.com
original name was, of course, Hamlet--provides the lowest fare on a route, a
90-day price history and, using a novel predictive algorithm, a tip to "buy now"
or "wait," along with a figure indicating how confident Farecast is in its
advice. (Flyers buy directly from the airlines.)

It is surprising that this kind of website is not developed by the OR people (especially revenue management people ) but a CS professor Oren Etzioni from University of Washington.

OR people need to establish much more sucessful story to advocate importantce of OR. Like a disucssion raised in the Coin-OR workshop, we need more credentials to demonstrate the impact of OR. If OR can become HOT in job market, the pressure of academic people can also release and they can focus on the question they are more interesting but time consuming.