Planning for an upcoming trip can be extremely exciting. It offers the prospect of adventure and experiencing new places and unique cultures. If the destination requires air travel, it can add additional layers of complexity and the daunting task of finding a good value. Searching for flights through a single airline could mean missing out on a better deal that a competitor is offering. Depending on what part of the world you live in, different departing and arrival airports might have better flight times or prices. In the past it took a lot more work to meticulously hunt for deals with various trip factors could take hours upon hours of work.
Now there is an easy to use and free tool that allows users to instantly compare prices for origination and destination airports, and different airports call Google Flights. Not only is this a huge time-saver, but it is completely free to use. Simply navigate to Google Flights and select Round Trip, One Way, or Multi City, the number of passengers and the ticket class. Here’s where this tool really comes into its own. You can put in numerous surrounding airports within a reasonable distance for the origination airport. This will maximize the flight selection and ensure the best deals are available.
Different airports might have differing prices for a multitude of factors. Delta, American Airlines, Southwest and others have hubs in certain cities or might only fly to specific airports. Google Flights will automatically present all these options if given the correct inputs. Next Select the trip dates and click search. The results page will show the best prices and departure/arrival times at the top. Additional options can be seen further down the list. When selecting a flight, be sure to consider the layover time. Some less expensive flights might have a long layover. Depending on the savings, if you don’t mind killing some time at it could be worthwhile. If a round trip flight was selected on the initial search page, you will first select the departure flight and then the return flight.
If you are flexible and are not locked into specific travel dates, this tool can really provide a great value. Click the Date Grid to scroll through future periods to see when the selected tickets will be the cheapest. The Price Grid is a great way to see the price for large range of travel time periods. Look for the shoulder seasons for common tourist destinations. For example, in Italy the shoulder months are typically April through May in the Spring, and September through October in the fall. Late Spring through the Summer are typically the most expensive. Winter is often the cheapest but for many is uncomfortable. In some areas of the world business might be close over the slow winter months, and public transportation can be more limited. So keep in mind that the cheapest travel dates might not be the best overall.
For those who are just looking for a new adventure, you can also leave the destination field blank.This is where this gets really fun! It will then display a Google Map with dots overlayed. Mouse over the dots to see the best flight price to that destination. Click and drag to pan around the world map, or zoom in to see additional cities pop up with more flights. You can also click on the pin to see the top 3 flights, and then View Flights to see the entire list. This works for destinations all over the world.
If it weren’t for Google Flights, we might not have been able to take our trip to Italy. The cost of flights that initially appeared in a standard search were prohibitive. However, with flexible dates and the ability to see multiple airports to fly into on the map, we were able to get round trip tickets for about $800. One of the really surprising things this will show is how much cheaper flying into a nearby airport can be. Again, it might be worth the travel time to a major city from an airport that is further away. Once you find a flight that offers the best balance of price and convenience, you can typically purchase tickets through Google Flights, so you don’t have to search for the same flight through the airline. We did multiple comparisons of prices for the same flights through Google Flights and directly the Airline websites to see if there is a difference in price. Delta, American Airlines and Air Canada were all spot checked, and each had an identical price to what was available through Google Flights.
If you’re not ready to book right away, or want to see if a better price becomes available in the future, there is an option to track the flight. If the price goes up or down, Google Flights will notify you.
