Fare tracking? Google flights etc
 

According to Google, there should be a Fare Tracking option in Google Flights. I just can't find it. Was it removed or is there another website I can use (paid or free) to track flight prices? I do use ITA Matrix but I see no reporting feature.

My husband told me to stop looking at business class flights East Coast, USA to Asia for a trip 10 months away. But I tricked him. I upgraded us to Polaris on our LIS-IAD flight in June, so he'll say "Yes we really do need to travel in business class."

Once you do a search, somewhere on the results page, look for a slider like this:

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...2552c8a549.png

slide the slider to start tracking fares for that search. You can track overall prices for one-ways and round trips, and also the price for specific flights once you've chosen an itinerary. I vaguely recall you can't track prices for a multi-city search, I think? And on mobile the slider might be in the middle of the page or at the bottom.

You can view current prices (with historical graphs) of all your tracked flights at https://www.google.com/travel/flights/saves (or from flights dot google dot com click the hamburger menu and then Tracked Flight Prices). You'll also get periodic emails when prices move up or down, but these aren't instantaneous.

Just got a GF notification email "Your tracked flight from AAA to BBB: 12% fare increase likely in 22h", is this x increase in y time a new feature? If only it includes z confidence level.

the oldest one I can find in my emails is from October, but I periodically delete GF alert emails. My vague recollection is that it's been a feature much longer than that, but don't quote me on it...

If Google sends n thousands of email telling people to buy now, I'd say z is pretty close to 1...

They don't even need to analyze the underlying stats, they just need to trigger enough purchases to empty the current fare bucket.

The saved examples I have are all for specific flights, so probably not thousands of people tracking an individual itinerary :p but sure, there could be some self-fulfilling effect.

If I had to guess though, the emails are triggered when the "must book by" date of cheaper fare rules is about to expire.

Ahha! So GF looks into the fare rules and maybe the buckets? If GF bought EF....
The price did go up, by 15% vs the predicted 12% hah.

To be clear, that's pure speculation on my part, I have no knowledge as to the actual inner workings of GF...

Stopped Getting Android Notifications on Price Drops
 

I heavily relied on getting instant Google Flights price change notifications on my phone throughout the years. I still get the emails, but stopped getting the Android Flights price changes about 2-3 months ago. Is anyone else having this problem?

Without sharing too many details :), Google goes by what the airlines "offer" Google to list. There are two buckets, one, which Google prioritizes, is complied based on the offers the airlines (or OTA) make to Google. The second (which you usually find under "other options" is composed of the search results that are independent of the offer -- they go by the usual criteria such as the distance from the airports selected, connections, duration, cost, the authenticity of the vendor, etc..

Thanks, but I'm not sure this helped :) perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but I don't really see how the above info pertains to what we were discussing above, which was how Google "knows" that fares are likely to go up by x% in y days.

I don't even understand what this is supposed to mean. Are you talking about which airline vs. OTA booking options are shown once you pick flights? How is "distance from the airports selected" ever relevant? And how would connections/duration/cost factor into this, since by this point you've already picked a specific set of flights?

Google Testing New Layouts for Google Flights
 

I haven't actually seen a new look to Google Flights, but my scripts in the last few days have been occasionally failing because Google seems to be testing different layouts.

They seem to be trying to make the page look a bit more like Kayak / Momondo by displaying what they consider to be the "Best" flights by default. The odd thing is I have the sort set to "Price" which is overriding the "Best" option and probably making the page look like the "Cheapest" option.

New Page
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...6993daf63b.png

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...ee1489163e.png



Existing Page
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...93ff473875.png

I've noticed similar things, the lowest priced flight is showing up at the top, but rather at the bottom, or "OTHER Flights" window.

noticed separate tickets now say "self transfer"

Not sure if it's related the the previous GF x CX wonkiness, I'm now only seeing direct CX prices on calendar view and "Best" tab, and the cheaper OTA prices on "Cheapest" tab.

I would say this is an improvement.
Even better if there was an actual OTA on/off toggle.