Estimating the waiting time for a confirmation at the wallet level

[symaxian]

I see a large number of posts having to do with confusion or regret at the inability of their transactions to confirm due to a very small fee applied. Would it not be possible for a wallet to estimate the time needed to confirm a transaction of a given amount and fee from looking back at the waiting time for similar transactions over the past few weeks? Or is the volume just not there to make a reliable estimate?

[DeathAndTaxes]

It would be possible.  A node (wallet) has lots of potential information.

a) the number of unconfirmed tx currently (the memory pool)
b) the amount of fees paid on those tx.
c) the size of previous recent blocks

So it could be done, developers just have not done it ... yet.  Bitcoin is an open source project you are free to make a pull of the project and improve it.  If you (and others) are interested but lack development skills and alternative would be to fund a bounty to see a feature you like integrated into one or more clients.