Google Flights is one of the most powerful tools for finding the best airline deals and routing. It can save you a lot of time relative to searching around on the websites of individual airlines. It works well for both domestic and foreign airlines and has built in features to help you find great airfares even if you don’t know exactly where you want to go. Let’s explore Google Flights!
Using Google Flights
The homepage of Google Flights has a clean and simple interface, congruent to the Google brand in general. At the top of the screen you have a few basic search options. Like other search engines, you can choose between round-trip, one-way, or multi-city searches. Then you choose your desired class of service and number of passengers. Finally, enter your departure and destination cities and dates. You can specify the airport or allow for any airport around a particular city.
Below is an example of a search for a round trip between New York and Los Angeles. Along with the results, Google offers two options right at the top of the results screen. The first is suggestions for similar flights that currently have a lower price. In this example, we entered a Saturday to Saturday search, but Google says we can save $139 by leaving a day early and returning the following Saturday. Secondly, Google offers the option to track prices. If you enable this feature, you will get emails when the price of your trip changes and notifies you of the new price. A great feature is that your inbox won’t be cluttered with tons of flight alert emails. Google makes it simple to navigate to your tracked price screen and turn off tracking if you no longer desire updates.
Below this section will be the results for individual flights. Google puts what they think is the best flights in a separate section at the top. The primary factors which determine which flights are the best are price, duration, and number of stops. According to most people, the ideal flight is a cheap non-stop flight.
In the example below, there are three flights in the “best flights” section. However, each of these flights have multiple options, as stated by the language such as “2 similar flights.” If you click on each flight, the remaining options will drop down, allowing you to see each time of day the flight is offered.
The Discover Destinations Feature
The Discover Destinations feature allows you to research open-ended searches where you can enter desired settings for three variables: dates, places, and interests. This feature is great if you have flexibility in your travel schedule and interested to find a great deal or an interesting place to visit. Its a fun way to daydream and see what destinations are possible. In the example below, we first click “dates” and enter October for one week. Then we click on the “places tab” and select Asia. Google provides a table of cards that look like the screenshot below:
You can click on a card to reveal the options available for each destination.
Clicking the “show flights” link will lead back to the main results screen that we showed in the first example. The best flights will be displayed at the top, and then numerous other possibilities below that. There is also an option to “show hotels” which will display a map of hotels and a list of properties and prices.
When only using the date and place tabs, the results are returned at a very high level. When doing international searches, you will only get countries, not cities within those countries. However, you can change the search by using the interests tab. For example, if we select “Adventure Travel,” we get several results for Dubai. There are results for several other countries as well, but each result is displayed at the city level.
Using Filters on Google Flights
Once you have a general set of search results, there are several options to refine the flight choices. Right below the data fields you will see five drop down menus:
- Stops
- Price
- Airline
- Times
- More
The stops menu allows you to choose between any, nonstop, one or two stops. The price filter is simply a slider tool allowing you to set a maximum price.
The airline menu is moredetailed. You may select one of the three major airline alliances, which can be handy if you plan on making an award booking, or want to purchase a paid ticket and credit the miles to a partner airline. You can also choose to select or exclude specific airlines, which is a great filter when looking for routing for mileage award booking where you want to avoid certain carriers because of high fuel surcharges.
The times menu allows you to set departure and arrival times individually for your outbound and return flights.
The “more” menu has three types of options: duration, separate tickets, and connecting airports. The duration filter is a slider that allows you to set a maximum flight length. The “separate tickets” filter allows you choose whether or not you want Google to display results that would force you to book separate tickets, typically two one-way tickets on separate airlines. This requires a bit more work on your part, but can result in substantial savings. Lastly, you may select or exclude specific airports for your connection. This is most useful if you are planning to stopover in a connecting city.
Do you use Google Flights when researching flights? What are your thoughts about it?
David is the Author of Memoirs of Napoleon Streisand and the Founder of Wise Flys. He has been to 7 continents and loves to travel the world for cheap.
Author: David
David is the Author of Memoirs of Napoleon Streisand and the Founder of Wise Flys. He has been to 7 continents and loves to travel the world for cheap.
Is Google the best flight search engine? If not, what is?
Google flights has its advantages. For some reason, I think momondo.com has more of the smaller carriers as options. Smaller carriers are usually cheaper.
I like to use the open ended option to see where I can go in the world.
Me too! Its a fun day dreaming activity to see whats possible.