Did you will know with just a few handy tricks, Google Flights can be your new best friend when booking flights? Whether you're following the cheapest option, the quickest way to just get there or something like that in between, there are some great tips and techniques for making the most using this truly excellent tool.
It's all thanks to something known as the ITA Matrix, a type of flight software created by some MIT scientists in the late 1990s, bought out by Google ten years ago, and today for you to use via Google Flights.
It's what is known as metasearch: you do not book through Google, you book through airlines (or, less often, through online travel specialists) and Google receives a percentage for sending you their way. So, exactly what does it do?
Add convenient (or strange) airport combinations
Let's say that you know you need to fly from anywhere between striking distance of Birmingham in the UK to Japan.
You can choose any mixture of airports you like: departing Birmingham obviously, plus Manchester, London Heathrow and East Midlands, say, however, you can also skip (for instance) Gatwick or Stansted. Let's imagine you could even go up to Glasgow and sleep on the relative's couch the night time before, so include that one out of.
Arriving, let's imagine you're carrying out a trip from Tokyo to Kyoto to Hiroshima. You do not really mind should you get to any of those cities or perhaps Fukuoka in Japan's west, so make a look.
How much are you able to save? Well, booking a couple of months out for a few weeks in cherry blossom season I discovered flights for 2 hundred pounds under simply looking for Birmingham to Tokyo. You will need to travel down to London for it, but for many travellers that's a matter of hopping on the affordable coach straight to Heathrow.
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Just type the city name (or, for the advanced, the 3 letter airport code) in to the “from” or “to” boxes, accompanied by a comma to include another city afterwards.
Currently, there appears to be considered a five-city limit each side, but that's a wonderfully large range of destination combinations.
And be sure to look out for that light grey "All Airports” note with a city name. If you don't know, for instance, that Osaka has two airports, or that Milan has three, this is a good method to make sure you're searching for all the options, bear in mind to double-check the airports you'll really be flying back and forth from.
The hidden calendar is a really powerful tool
You may not realize that, once you've picked your cities and calendar, you are able to reopen the calendar tabs and see should there be even affordable prices available if you are flexible on dates, which a great deal of us are when we're going on holidays.
Just click your departure date, wait a few seconds (it may be as much as thirty approximately if you're on a slowish connection) to check out prices which come up in green, what are cheapest options.
Once you've visited that departure date, watch for another couple of seconds for that return dates for which that price is available (also marked in green) to magically appear.
In the Birmingham to Tokyo example, I came across that leave per week earlier I could save an extra lb80 – that's a large amount of okonomiyaki around the streets of Dōtombori.
Take phone Date Grid too, which is a bit like that old “plus/minus three days” thing on some websites, and it's a different way to hunt around to see whether you're getting the best deal around.
Learn much more about what is going to be on board
In that Birmingham to Tokyo example, the cheapest option is on China Eastern Airlines. If you've never heard of them, you might also be wondering what's aboard.
Thanks to some company called Routehappy and their database of what is onboard, Google Flights informs me that I'll have an excellent amount of legroom, wifi, onboard power and USB outlets, and on-demand video on the airplane to Shanghai.
(Full disclosure: five years ago now I worked at Routehappy, but don't have any financial or other affiliation using the company whatsoever nowadays.)
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Google Flights also appears a little suitcase-with-a-line-through-it notification if one of the airlines within the results list doesn't offer a carry-on bag as part of the ticket price (Ryanair, taking a look at you here).
That can help you figure out whether that good deal really is a good deal or not, particularly if you then make use of the Bag Filter that permits you to check for pricing having a piece of overhead carry-on luggage.
Figure out how much an association is worth for you
One of the very most powerful bits, I've found, is that the display from the information on the outcomes screen lets me figure out in the event that cheaper connection is actually worthwhile on the nonstop flight.
Let's say you're going to Japan from a major city like London that has nonstop flights. On some dates, there are flights saving you two hundred pounds for among those Shanghai connections, but they set you back an additional 6 hours of travel time.
Sometimes, though, that it is an extra twelve hours, and the fact that Google makes it clear using the total elapsed some time and the quantity of layover you will have – and just what airport it's – is a real benefit.
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You may not mind an extended layover: there are airports with transit hotels in the actual terminal (possess a swift search on the internet for your options there). Especially over busy periods, saving lots of money and achieving a longer layover where you can catch six hours of uninterrupted sleep inside a by-the-hour bedroom after which shower before you're on your way again can definitely be worth it.
Now, that calculation will be different for each traveller. But it is the fact that you can now make it that's one thing I've found best about Google Flights.
It's not the only tool you should use, obviously: add a quick search in Private Browsing Mode on whatever airlines come up as your best options, and perhaps use another flight search site too to compare.
