Google Flights
 

http://www.google.com/flights/

It has begun.

Nice, no international yet, but it looks promising.

With ITA why would google make another flight search?

its their business to get more clicks....

Google flights looks much more user friendly for the masses.

The duration / price slider looks cool

As does the bar-graph style calendar outlook

Flight Search feedback
 

Hey everyone,

I'm the Google Web Search Community Manager (https://plus.google.com/102397052073935758476/about) and I'd love to know more of your thoughts on Google Flight Search. I've already heard from a few users that they're bummed that it's US only.

What do you think?


~Kelly
Join my community as well!
http://www.google.com/support/forum/...58c676ef&hl=en

Wow. That's nice. You can select multiple airports then slide the calendar along to look for less expensive fares. The dot graph is a nice feature.

Looks nice! One minor problem is that for those of us with a large minimum font size set in our browsers because of reduced eyesight, the page formatting is slightly messed up. For example, if the minimum font size is set to 20 points, the departure date text entry box only shows "Fri September " plus a little bit of the "3". The rest of the "30" is hidden behind the left and right arrows.

Please continue to follow this thread in the FT Travel Technology Forum.
Thanks..
Obscure2k
TravelBuzz Moderator

i would love to see international as well. Another feature I would like to see is a listing of all fares from a city to all other cities in the system. Ie, I could click on ord and see the lowest fare to all cities served from ord. maybe allow it to be narrowed by airline or partner group. It would be nice if it could look out 3 months in the future. While I have traveled through out the world and the USA, their are cities I would like to visit; however, I can't spend the time to check the fares all the time. Having it so I could list a desired set of cities or just have them all populate could induce me to travel to some of the places thereby making money for the airline if the price is right. If i see that marathon, fl is on sale a couple of months out, it may convince me to spend a long weekend thier. The same if I saw that Sju was on sale in feb, would be booking it now.

Another vote for international! ^

Yes, that makes it mostly useless. It's already quite easy to use US domestic carrier websites, and there aren't so many US carriers anymore. This type of tool really comes in handy for complex International tickets. That's what I use ITA for, pretty much every week.

It looks pretty promising. I'd love to see an integration of the ITA query language or something similar to allow for maximum flexibility.

Particularly there is a need to set which connections you want (e.g. sea to new york with a connection in either ord or lax). I should be able to put in SEA::ORD,LAX in the from box (or something similar)

https://matrix1.itasoftware.com/cvg/...dvanced-topics

More airlines! Where's, for example, G4? And, being Google, can't you coax the prices out of WN? And yeah, international of course. Buy Skyscanner as well IMO.

Looks nice but still obviously in development
 

Looks promising, but needs work. For example, I looked for flights from MCO to PHL on SkyTeam, returns 'no flights available', yet MCO ATL, and ATL PHL do return flights.

Heck with international (of course I want it at some time) I just want Canada and puerto rico!

A price-o-meter kind of thing would be good.
After we put in our home airport and dates, one slider bar where the user can gradually increase the amount he is ready to pay for that period (say a weekend), and watch all the airport options appear or disappear.

Eg: On the sep 23-25weekend, I need a mini vacation with $200 - 250 to spend on flights. I am ok with MCO, PHX, SFO etc. The slider bar should allow me to see which options I have between that price range.

Im disappointed un the lack of availibility for the smaller airports in the NYC area (HPN and SWF)

I tried searching for both of these cities and it came up as unavailable, which is disappointing to put it lightly.


Also a companion app would be nice.

The power behind Google in air travel could be amazing.

Are you sure?

http://www.google.com/flights/#searc...1;r=2011-10-05

Being able to search for multi-stops would be nice, but that goes with the ability to search for specific connections mentioned earlier.

1) international is a must.
2) same-day round trips.

Wake me up when they offer international searches.

I agree. If they have a special fares for me. Hoping if I can fly PHX-ATL-AMS-GVA on operating DL/KL. If I got a special fares to see my niece's 2nd birthday.

Yes! Why don't they just jump ahead and buy up a couple dozen A380's and 787's and launch Google Air? Or if they don't want to wait that long, just buy up United. Market cap $6.7 billion. That's pocket change for Google!

This could be Google's big opportunity to make a small fortune in the airline industry!

As one of our Eng Directors mentioned in the blog post announcing this feature, "This is just an early look: the takeoff, not the final destination! You may notice that at the moment we include a limited number of U.S. cities and show results for round-trip economy-class flights only. We’re working hard to improve this feature and look forward to sharing more updates."

Stay tuned for some improvements!

Another vote for international and multicity searches. As it is it's pretty much useless for me. (I tried an international destination and then just left the site when I found it was US only. So, I can't comment on any features.) And I'm a Google stockholder, so I really want it to work!

1) Glad to see the big G is taking an interest here.
2) Definitely bummed that it's US only, prior to seeing that post I was already assuming that that is a temporary thing, but in the short term it's kept me from spending much time playing with it.
3) The UI work looks very nice and in keeping with Google style, even so. I'll definitely check it out more when my next plans are for US travel rather than international.
4) For the hardcore folks here, the ITA Matrix interface will probably always make more sense - although some way to get it (or a prettified but equally functional version of it) from the flights page would be nice.

... starting with a large fortune, of course.

If I'm a founder of Google, I don't really want to downgrade myself to being a mere millionaire - Branson's old saw about the easiest way to become a millionaire is to be a billionaire and buy an airline is still pretty true.

waste of time
 

It's a useless site. I hope no energy is drained from the superior ITA matrix tool.

• Google flights does not find the best airfare
• it lacks the expressive power of ITA
• scope of inventory is limited to common databases (no LCC scraping)

It has all of the shortcomings of ITA, and it lacks what ITA is really good at. And it introduces nothing unique. It's a completely redundant tool, so I won't be using it even if intl flights are added.

If you want expressive power, ITA software trumps.

If you want the lowest airfare, you have to use sites that are capable of multiple bookings (dohop or skyscanner), and you still have to check the sites that scrape the LCCs (listed here).

I should add that there is a better positioned thread on Google Flights in online travel booking bidding agencies.

For now, maybe. Google do have a track record of continually improving their services and adding more features. I suspect they view this as version 0.1.

Google has a track record of dumbing down search. They keep the syntax watered-down so non-technical users can use their tools. For all the simplicity, their engines have to be very sophisticated to try to guess what the user really wants -- and this still does not achieve results that you can get with a more sophisticated query language.

E.g., what if you want to find all content where the word chocolate appears within 3 words of the word coconut? This capability existed before Google came into existence; on Lexus-Nexus you would search for "chocolate w/3 coconut". The same search is impossible on google, because google is designed for simple users.

Google is good at coming up with the best results for a poorly specified query. But what advanced users prefer are decent results from a well specified query.

what do you mean
 

what do you mean better positioned? Maybe since it is only four posts it is easier to read on one page?

Not ready for prime time.

To test it out, I was just checking LGA-DCA nonstop and I could not find the airline I usually use for this route. I wonder if you've heard of it. It's called Delta.

+1 for needing to show international flights