
Get away with Google Flights - rey12rey
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/02/get-away-with-google-flights.html?m=0
======
jxf
I've been using Google Flights since the middle of last year and love it.
However, as a frequent traveler for business/conferences, I think there are
some things people should be aware of:

* Google's data seems to be not as fresh as Kayak or Hipmunk's is. There have been multiple times when I've tried to book a flight via GF only to be told that there were no seats left when I arrive on the airline's page. I suspect part of the greatly improved speed comes at the cost of aggressive caching that runs a risk of things being out of date.

* Google's data is all over the map on pricing. Very frequently the airline's price will be much cheaper than GF. And more than once (especially on United or American Airlines) I've noticed that if I book directly through an airline over a VPN, I save several hundred bucks versus if I click through from Google Flights or Kayak. Conversely, sometimes GF is less expensive and when I land on the airline's page it's more expensive.

I think the best thing to use it for is route discoverability: which kind of
planes and which airlines fly to which locations, on which days at which
times? It's also great for doing complex open-jaw routes or hidden-city fares
-- and since those routes don't change very often, the data is more likely to
be accurate.

~~~
zatkin
Which VPN gets you the best deals?

Also, do you book on Tuesdays?

~~~
ThatAdamGuy
Assuming you're on google.com/flights, I'm fairly sure that using a VPN,
changing your IP, flushing your cookies... none of that should change the
availability and pricing you see on Flights.

And no, don't bother trying to time your bookings. It's kinda like the stock
market; trying to beat the market, er, optimize your flights purchase time is
likely to lead to sorrow and regret. From the research our Google Flights team
did recently, we found that if you wait a week, on average you're gonna pay
more for the same flight.

And no, we didn't see any universal discount on Tuesdays, either ;)

~~~
low_battery
Actually If you save your itineraries you can see daily price change graph in
saved flights view (star icon). A recent feature, small but interesting.

~~~
ThatAdamGuy
ah, good point, low_battery; I like that feature, too!

------
bemmu
I love the flexibility this has and after giving it a serious go I never went
back to Kayak.

If you know exactly when and where to fly, Kayak is great. But with any
uncertainty, Google Flights is better for exploring. Maybe you know when to
fly, but not when you want to come back. Or maybe you don't even know where
you want to fly, in which case you can get destination suggestions. It's also
a lot snappier.

Now with this flight data they have, I'd imagine being able to just use Google
Maps route search to go from A to B such that it would also include flights
where applicable. While it kind of does, I am still able to think better
routes myself. For example if I search from Tokushima, Japan -> San Francisco,
USA, it suggests I should fly from Tokushima. Where actually it's a lot
cheaper with almost no time difference to go by bus to Osaka first instead.

~~~
kremi
Kayak's explore is pretty nice when you have uncertainty:
[http://www.kayak.com/explore/BER/](http://www.kayak.com/explore/BER/)

Although unlike Google Flights, it doesn't let you search for specific dates.

~~~
rbcgerard
nor does it allow you to search for specific times i.e. if i want to go
somewhere for the weekend, flights at 6am on friday are not that useful...

------
Bedon292
Not sure why they are just posting this now, it has existed for quite a while.
It also has hotel searching.

Not all companies have prices displayed on the site, but it links directly to
the companies rather than paying additional fees through a third party.

~~~
yekim
I wasn't even aware of Google Flights until I saw the article posted on HN. Go
figure...

For some of us, the constant deluge of info, along with work and family life,
makes it tough to stay on top of all the latest developments. Glad this
service was "re-announced".

~~~
wbeckler
There's lots of travel sites popping up all the time, including accommodations
sites. That's why I built [http://AllTheRooms.com](http://AllTheRooms.com),
which aggregates all the different accommodations sites and deals sites, like
Expedia, Groupon, Hotwire, and Airbnb

~~~
mh-
decent site.

I'd update your copyright footer, if only because at a glance it makes me
wonder if it's unmaintained.

I've been wanting a more powerful hotel search site for many years, but I
think most of the features I'd care to see are limited by the messy data
available about the properties (amenities, etc.) and the margins just aren't
there to support an aggregator curating their own data. Maybe not even for a
reseller like Hotels.com.

------
dheera
Awesome. I can never understand what antiquated database and UI the other
flight reservation websites are using. Simple database queries take 10+
seconds, and then you have to click N more times to get the taxes included.

Why can't I query for

    
    
        SELECT * FROM tickets WHERE sqrt((destination_latitude-desired_latitude)^2 - (destination_longitude-desired_longitude)^2) < 5000 AND abs(unix_timestamp(departure)-unix_timestamp('somedate'))<10*86400 ORDER BY (price+taxes+fees);
    

with proper geoindexing and sharding this query should take no more than a
fraction of a second, yet airline websites want me to use some stupidly-
designed UI that can't implement above query, takes 10+ seconds to return
results, and doesn't include the taxes and fees. Thus I need to often manually
enter every destination within 5000km and every date combination and manually
waste half a day to find the cheapest ticket to "anywhere interesting".

Furthermore often times changing the language and country of the website
changes ticket prices; a well-designed, globally-consistent database should
not allow this to happen.

I hope that Google will disrupt and reengineer this ancient system.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
For the same reason I can't just renew a domain at Network Solutions without
going through eight different pages trying to upsell me things (and often
defaulting to checking on those services).

Expedia, Orbitz, etc make money via nag screens and upsells. They have no
incentive to make the experience positive or easy. Google seems to.

~~~
dheera
I switched to Namecheap; they sell stuff but are not annoying about it.

Google Domains also looks promising but I'm waiting for them to not be in beta
lest they decide to scrap the product. Google would win me over if they
offered free SSL certificates. In fact I think they should go ahead and
disrupt the SSL industry by doing that too. Nobody should have to pay for a
silly cryptographic signature. That would disrupt NS and all the others who
try to upsell stuff.

~~~
nadams
> ...free SSL certificates. In fact I think they should go ahead and disrupt
> the SSL industry

StartSSL already offers free SSL certificates - and they haven't disrupted the
industry. Even if Google started offering free SSL certificates - it's only a
band-aid to the problem not a solution.

~~~
isthisforme
Have you tried using StartSSL?? (a) They aren't free if you are doing anything
'commercial' (b) I decided to try and give them my money. I tried very hard. I
gave up.

After uploading your documents 30 times, them claiming they didn't get them,
you would too.

Oh, and uploading them each time was pretty painful.

------
ThatAdamGuy
Hey everyone, just spotted this thread and was really happy to see all the
comments about Google Flights. Though I've been at Google for nearly 9 years,
I'm pretty new to the Flights team, so there's still a lot I'm learning... but
I'll try to tackle at least few questions below :)

(I'm also both an oldtimer and newtimer to HN; long time lurker, and I opened
an account ages ago, but sorry I've not been active here before!)

~~~
CardenB
Hey Adam,

I'm joining the flights team this summer. Could I maybe talk to you a bit to
get some perspective?

Feel free to email me: cardenbag@gmail.com

~~~
ThatAdamGuy
Congrats... and done! Looking forward to having you onboard!

------
tarp
ITA Software was acquired by Google awhile back.

[https://matrix.itasoftware.com/](https://matrix.itasoftware.com/)

~~~
gringocl
This is an awesome platform, if only you could purchase through this!

~~~
simonebrunozzi
Their plan is probably to enable it at some point.

~~~
gohrt
Matrix has been running 10 years already.

------
radiorental
Don't know where they're getting their data from.

Boston-dublin in Oct is over $1300 on google flight with Aerlingus

Same flight directly on the airline's website is $940.

Good luck with that, Google.

~~~
jonknee
Though I see $550 round trip tickets on Delta, so there's that.

~~~
radiorental
Delta doesn't fly direct. For this particular journey I could elect to spend
26 hours in Istanbul for $700 and change.

------
joelbrewer01
I've used Google Flights before, but I almost always end up flying Southwest,
which doesn't disclose their prices to aggregators. Does anyone know if Google
has tried to strike a deal with them? If anyone could, I imagine it would be
Google.

~~~
Avitas
I suppose someone could get bold and attempt to do some scraping. Of course,
my money would be on SouthWest stopping this behavior as a violation of their
terms of service.

Here is their terms of service:

[https://www.southwest.com/html/about-southwest/terms-and-
con...](https://www.southwest.com/html/about-southwest/terms-and-
conditions/index.html?clk=MBSFTR)

They explicitly take ownership of the content, mention that the information is
only for non-commercial use, exclude use of the information on their site for
commercial use and additionally use for any other purpose. In case their
message is not clear, they go even further and list a variety of prohibited
activities.

The language of their Terms & Conditions is rather broad. It looks like
virtually any activity on their website as a violation. Perhaps that is now
the norm.

------
chm
Incidentally I reserved two tickets yesterday after finding the best prices
with Google Flights. It linked me directly to the airline's reservation system
a couple of clicks away from confirmation.

BTW, I used their map to find the most suitable flight. I could change dates
on the fly and see the prices change instantly. It's a great service.

Now if they could do the same for railways, I'd gladly pay for the
convenience.

~~~
ThatAdamGuy
chm, thanks much! Appreciate the kudos!

------
estefan
I want to be able to search by criteria like "somewhere sunny", "the
mediterranean", "somewhere to party in the summer", etc. I thought this was
it, but not quite :-(...

~~~
nedwin
Not quite that level but check out Adioso.com. They have a bunch of natural
language search queries that work.

------
brotoss
Google Flights has been my first search destination for months...the graph is
awesome

------
mcdowall
I've been using Momondo recently, which has all of these tools and a much
better UX. This just feels like a re skin of the ITA site and a bit of a poor
effort at that.

~~~
smellf
The Momondo UI is nicer, but Google Flights has the "price in the calendar"
feature.

------
nso
That notification about avg. delays is an absolute killer feature.

[http://i.imgur.com/Nb0EYDh.png](http://i.imgur.com/Nb0EYDh.png)

~~~
jrockway
As someone who is always running late, I pick the flights that are most often
delayed.

------
davidf18
How is it that we were able to land a man on the moon over 45 years ago and we
still can't just type in a search engine and get the cheapest flights from
point A to point B on certain dates? I find this really baffling. It is a
service all customers want yet even the great Google can't seem to provide
this. Meanwhile Google puts out so many "experimental products" that they
later dispose.

There is talk of Google getting into cell-phone service and the are already
getting into Google fiber. I wish Google would use its pricing power and buy
entire flights between major cities domestic and international (eg, NYC to
Chicago, LA, SF, Miami, Atlanta, and London). Moreover, an airline can really
make its profits on airline fuel speculation since this is the most volatile
component of airline costs.

~~~
jordigh
> How is it that we were able to land a man on the moon over 45 years ago and
> we still can't just type in a search engine and get the cheapest flights
> from point A to point B on certain dates?

Because the airlines have their own army of geniuses working very hard to make
sure that this is difficult to do:

[http://www.cheapair.com/blog/travel-tips/air-
fares-101-why-d...](http://www.cheapair.com/blog/travel-tips/air-
fares-101-why-do-fares-change-all-the-time/)

Who are you? How much money do you have? How badly do you want these tickets?
How often are you checking the price, what else have you bought? How are your
buying habits compared to everyone else's? These are the questions the
airlines are trying to answer in order to maximise how much money they can get
off each individual.

~~~
MichaelGG
Wow. So as a United "elite" member, just doing searches on their app or site
but with my account, is gonna cost me? Because I've never seen this happen. I
seem to get the lowest fare they have. I've not done serious tests, just seen
when other people look up my flights, on say, Kayak, they get the same prices.

~~~
jordigh
Try browsing for tickets with and without private browsing enabled, and from
different geographic IP addresses, from different computers, and different
websites (cheapair, Expedia, Orbitz...). You should definitely see a
fluctuation in prices, for the same seats. I always do.

It may well be that elite members get lower prices, as this may be the way for
the airline to maximise their profit off you. Their algorithms are quite
inscrutable, intentionally so.

------
penetrarthur
I would love GF to have a feature where you select a departure airport and
arrival airport and dates, and make GF find me where to go in between. Like a
search with multiple cities but so that you decide the departure city of the
first flight and the arrival city of the second flight.

------
NamTaf
Two complaints:

1) When I go to the front page
([https://www.google.com/flights/](https://www.google.com/flights/)),
everything from and including the 'return/one way/multi stop' row down is
fixed-width at about 650px even when my window is far larger. This sort of
fixes itself once I start selecting cities, but is randomly narrower than the
auto-sizing search bar + other stuff above it. I'm on Win7 x64 / FF 36.0.

2) Please localise currencies. You auto-detect me in Brisbane, Australia. If I
pick a flight to Sydney on AU carriers, I don't care about prices in USD. You
either convert it to USD in the first place (or just assume 1AUD=1USD) but
don't when you display it to me.

------
peterwwillis
I used Google Flights back in November to plan a 10-day getaway during
December. BWI->MIA, MIA->LAX, SFO->BWI. Total airfare cost: $420. It was far
easier to do this with GF than with Hipmunk or any other website i'd tried.

------
otar
I think SkyPicker is worth mentioning here:
[https://skypicker.com](https://skypicker.com)

If you are flexible where you want to go, when, how much you can stay, etc...
then you get really good suggestions.

~~~
abawany
Minor: got a certificate error when I clicked on this url. However that
disappeared when I manually typed in www.skypicker.com in the browser. Most
likely cause it seems is because their site certificate is *.skypicker.com

------
thezach
I've been using this for quite some time... works very well. I only will fly
one or two airlines, but I still use Google Flights to compare days, and
departure airports because its so much easier!

------
imjk
There are sites dedicated to scouring and curating the best deals found using
the ITA Software Matrix. [http://Theflightdeal.com](http://Theflightdeal.com)
is the best that comes to mind. [http://PointsBuzz.com](http://PointsBuzz.com)
also aggregates the various different sites focused on flight deals and
maximizing frequent flyer points for the most worthwhile trips.

------
scintill76
Open-ended destination is great, but I've sometimes wished for open-ended
source. My usecase is something like a casual multi-stop trip, where you have
an eventual destination in mind, but would like to save money, or see where
else you can go along the way for a similar amount of money.

I've worked around it by manually checking nearby routes, or getting a feel
for options with open-ended reverse flights and then searching the reverse
again.

------
michaelrbock
I'm a fan of [https://www.vamo.com/](https://www.vamo.com/) for multi-city
trips. You put in your point of origin and all the cities you want to visit
(and for how long), and it routes you between the cities on the best type of
transportation and offers accommodation suggestions as well.

------
Yhippa
I used to be a hardcore Hipmunk user and I still think I prefer it to Google
Flights. I had some trouble recently with Hipmunk linking to flights that
don't exist on the airline's websites. I've been using Google Flights ever
since. Hopefully Hipmunk will get things back in order again.

------
jkaljundi
Tried and most flights between US and Europe were at least $1-300 more
expensive than on the usual travel sites.

------
unrulyOddish
Hmmmm. I'm searching New York to Europe (March 25th to April 23rd) and it's
giving me a $303 round trip to Madrid. Thats absolutely incredible, but when I
click through the fair jumps to over $800. Anyone else experiencing things of
that ilk?

~~~
solve
Exactly what I was saying. Google here is claiming that people don't often buy
the cheapest listed flight... and the reason is because they can't.

------
GotAnyMegadeth
Minor complaint: the first thing I tried to do was try to find a flight from
anywhere in the UK to anywhere in Slovenia. Whilst it lets me be vague about
my destination, it doesn't seem to about my starting point... Skyscanner lets
me do this

------
sq1020
It's super fast which certainly cannot be said about other similar services.

------
solve
"cheaper isn’t always better"

BS. Non-business flights are the most price-sensitive type of product there
could possibly be.

Near 100% of people only apply a few very basic filters, e.g. no 12-hour
layovers, doesn't depart at 5am, and then choose the cheapest. It's not some
sophisticated "balance" that needs some advanced machine learning or
personalization to accomplish. It's a few obvious filters that are the same
for practically everyone.

I'd love to see partial dependance plots for each of the obvious filtering
factors, vs how often people chose that flight. That's the best way to do this
type of analysis.

Not to mention that many times the cheapest flight listed on these travel
sites isn't actually available when you try to book it. Wonder how that may
have skewed Google's analysis.

~~~
ThatAdamGuy
Hey solve, I thought the exact same thing you did! But then -- as someone who
recently joined the Google Flights team -- I helped lead some research that
included this topic... and was honestly surprised to find that about 40% of
the folks searching on Google Flights DON'T pick the cheapest flight.

Price, certainly, is still a huge factor in folks' decision, but convenience
plays a very significant role. And, from anecdotal evidence (not part of the
same research), brand loyalty is definitely a factor as well (a very price
sensitive travel blogger I know still prefers to fly on American, for
instance).

------
mootothemax
This makes me feel somewhat uneasy.

On the one hand, it works really well.

On the other, are Google aiming to take over every aggregation service out
there?

Something about the dominant search engine moving into this space just doesn't
sit right with me.

~~~
Bedon292
Search engines are all about aggregation, it seems like a logical step for
them. Bing, Yahoo, and even AOL also have their own travel sites, so it is not
just the dominant search engine, it is all of them. It is also nice to not
have to support some third party by buying tickets through them. Just compare
the prices and go directly to the airline.

~~~
mootothemax
_Bing, Yahoo, and even AOL also have their own travel sites_

The difference is, if I type _WAW to LHR_ into Google, I get flight listings
with prices and availability.

You're right that Bing, Yahoo etc. have their own _separate_ travel sites,
I've yet to see similar results in their search results.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _The difference is, if I type WAW to LHR into Google, I get flight listings
> with prices and availability._

Yes, and I think that's a _Good Thing_. Google rightly knows that when I type
"WAW to LHR", I want to know about the flight, not about where to find out
about that flight.

~~~
Trombone41
An implication of this difference is that google probably charges for that
convenience by saving your itinerary somewhere and selling it to your
insurance company.

------
_puk
Is this a purposeful reference to the late Lunn Poly [0]

"Flights with Google? Get Away!"

0 :
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunn_Poly](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunn_Poly)

------
teirce
I stumbled across Google Flights a couple of years ago back when it wasn't as
pretty, but I've always found it to be incredibly useful, at least for
traveling in the continental U.S.

------
gsmethells
I just used this to book my flight to PyCon 2015 oddly enough. It was pretty
damn easy to use and let me jump from its search results to directly booking
with Air Canada. Pretty smooth...

------
diltonm
I just ran a comparison with Expedia (which seems to no longer be ASP.NET
based as an aside); not too surprised, Expedia found the cheaper flights.
Read, cheaper, not necessarily better.

------
bruceb
I find Momondo to have one of the better layouts of prices when trying to find
cheaper days. [http://www.momondo.com/](http://www.momondo.com/)

------
tgraham
Very similar to kayak.co.uk/trips

------
wiradikusuma
Tangentially related, does anyone know of any provider where you can e.g. make
your own Hipmunk?

~~~
alexhawdon
[https://developers.google.com/qpx-
express/](https://developers.google.com/qpx-express/) is the API you can use
to make your own service like Google Flights/Hipmunk.

------
corwinstephen
I've been using Google Flights for over 2 years. Why is it just now getting
announced?

------
penetrarthur
Was it updated? I spent my whole evening yesterday planning the trip.

------
peter303
I like daily price bargraph. Gives a sense of overall prices.

------
GBond
A lot of the features seem highly inspired by Hipmunk.

------
chinathrow
Right into the heart of meta engines. Ouch.

------
salimmadjd
The UI/UX on this product is not that great. Google is offering a similar
solution as Kayak. But I'm not sure why they just didn't fully copy Kayak. It
feels to me, 1 - google thinks they are smarter than Kayak, 2 - they didn't
want to show they are copying Kayak.

For example, kayak does a great job of displaying all the options on the left
column. Google is hiding everything in drop downs. So then they need to have a
blog post to explain how their UI works where kayaks is just intuitive.

The same with bar chart pricing (which I like) why hide it behind a silly icon
like that. Now they have to educate their users what that icon means. Call it
"best days to fly" or even better show that at the bottom of the page.

~~~
jessegavin
I disagree. I spent nearly a year as a UI designer/engineer for a flight
search/booking tool and evaluated all the major interfaces. The #1 killer
feature google flights has which kills all other flight search tools (I have
seen) is speed. They bought a company (ITA) for something close to a billion
dollars which provides near realtime search results for flights.

Kayak (and others) do a good job of streaming search results, but you still
have to wait seconds before you're able to make decisions.

