Apparently Fares Fluctuate 400%

Seems that Yapta is actively trying to promote their pre-buy shopping tools over post-buy change alerts:

"The average airline ticket price fluctuates 400%. All those tricky price changes mean people like to shop around before they purchase airfare. That’s why the latest version of Yapta includes a comparison shopping notepad, right in a sidebar window of your Internet browser. "

Seems like a good call, given trends toward less generous carrier reprice policies. And the Yapta tool in your browser seems kind of neat. However, we question whether a downloaded app model will ever prevail over pure web services such as Kayak. Are consumers comfortable with another monitor on their PC in this era of pop-up blockers and virus threats? We know that even SideStep eventually had to go to the web-site play even though they were really sucessful with the download app.

More importantly, what's up with that 400% stat? What is the source? What does it mean? That average fares start at say $150 and end as high as $750? Fares don't even really change much, do they-availability changes? So many questions for such a petty point. But if consumers take the bait - more power to Yapta.