Hey y'all, I think we're now covering the use cases I've seen here, but feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken.
- Set origin and destination
- Set tentative dates
- Look at the Flexible Dates to see +/- a few days (and you can scroll either outbound or inbound here)
- Look at the (relatively new) Price Graph to see prices over the next many months, and note you can change the trip length here (4 days, 5 days, etc.)

Let me know if this largely takes care of your date'ish desires :)

Not quite... But, I can live with it :)

Now: when will you link ITA Matrix itineraries to Google Flights for booking! I'm sick of having to do this manually :(

Can't book flight found with Google
 

I found a flight on Google that I would like to purchase, but when I click book w/AA, it says check for errors and that the price has changed (The fare for this itinerary has changed since you selected your flight(s)), yet it lets me go to the purchase page and enter my pay info. It does not let me hold the reservation as it involves other airlines (I was able to do a hold w/BA just a few days ago, but not today, it appears). Finally, when I try to Review and Pay and select purchase, I get "Unavailable." System Error
This feature is currently unavailable. Please wait a few moments and try again.

I've tried a few times with the same result. Please help! Thanks.

How about you provide some information like start/end, date, etc.?

Hard to say much without more details. Are you able to replicate the price searching directly on aa.com or BA.com instead of going through google? How about on a third party booking site like Orbitz?

Can't book flight found with Google
 

Try your identical search on kayak or hipmunk which use a similar data source but have other booking options.

Also, I'm pretty sure that Google flights' speed is attributed to cached data, so it could be that the fare you're finding is simply sold out and not updated at Google yet.

Thanks for the input. I'm trying for DEN-SIN in Jan 16-18 and in Mar 26-28 I tried the search on kayak, but didn't even get to the page just before paying. What I don't understand is that with google, I got connected to AA, logged in and made it to the review and pay page and then was told "The feature is currently unavailable." This page comes up right after my passenger info page when I use kayak. Maybe it is that the fare's sold out, but I don't get why I can get to the penultimate page on google but not on kayak.

Added info- "I talked with an AA agent last night who informed me that JAL very often has pricing issues- that is, that a fare found online will inevitably be different if it contains a leg with JAL. That explains why there was the error message, but not why I could get to the penultimate page with everything seeming to be ok, but not able to buy the ticket.

Google Flights - Map Search Changes
 

It looks like Google Flights got an update and changed their Map Search. Instead of the price/date slider that pops up when selecting a destination, it now has a sidebar with the first three flights and some other random information.

The removal of the price/date slider there was extremely convenient when you had flexible dates and destinations for your travel. Now it requires quite a few more steps when looking for cheap, flexible date destinations, especially for MR or Segment Runs.

Are there any other changes that people have noticed?

I agree. Also, I don't want to see hotels on a page called flights. Perhaps an optional separate tab? I like the old G.c/f a lot better for the reasons you described.

Agreed - significant downgrade for my usage.

Google Flights Question
 

How can I find out the number of base miles for the segment in Google flights?

There are a number of mileage calculators out there. milecalc.com, gcmap.com, etc.

GF does not provide that information. Type the segments into a mileage calculator like GCMap.com

I just came here after noticing this annoying change. How DO i see the flexible prices around my preferred travel dates now?

I used to love that feature! :(

Error booking on AA.com
 

I see some other folks are encountering itineraries on google flights not bookable on AA.com.

I am trying to book:
PVD > CLT > SJU (AA1700, AA756 12/17/16)
SJU > CLT > PVD (AA1847, AA1729 12/31/16)

Prices out to $283 on google flights. Here's a link. Same itinerary shows up on Matrix ITA, Kayak and Hipmunk. However, when I link to AA I get: "The system was unable to process your search. Please try again."

If I try multi city search on AA.com, I go through an endless loop where it keeps repricing @ $283 but it keeps saying, "price no longer available" and reprices with the same itinerary. Very frustrating :mad:

Any advice?

Update: interesting, now (a day later) the itinerary is pricing out correctly on AA.com linked from Google Flights... so I guess the moral of the story is, keep trying?

What database technology is Google Flights using?
 

...such that the search is so much faster and more flexible than any I've seen used by any of the airlines?

I would assume that they're not just throwing lots of server capacity at it, but that they are querying fare databases much more efficiently or something. To the point where in the amount of time to see the results for one day in any other search engine, I can see a month's worth of the result in Google Flights with the complicated criteria I want.

Very curious to know why they're able to do this...

It's based on ITA. A key reason it is faster is that it does not interactively check availability.

*****

Which might explain why, especially recently, I am getting back great search results making flights look cheap-- then deciding on an itinerary, looking at hotels, etc-- then when I go to actually book, these fares don't actually exist. Momondo seems to do the same thing. Some very small print says, "This fare was bookable more than 4 hours ago" or something like that. Ugh.
I wouldn't mind that ITA takes more time-- but 50% of the time, it comes back with a server time out.

It's not just ITA. Google consumes travel provider APIs directly as well. Due to its size, it is able to impose a number of complex API standards (including built-in filtering). I would imagine it uses a self-developed NoSQL style DB as a front-end cache, and a mix of pre-filling and online queries depending on the frequency of the query.

Google Flights - email function
 

I have the email notification turned on for Google Flights, but I have yet to receive any emails after a couple of weeks of tracking a few flights. I am checking them manually and I know there has been movement in prices. Am I doing something wrong?

A question about Google Flights
 

On Google Flights if I wish to do a search for something like 'Anywhere in Euope' to NYC, how do I enter Europe? If I type in 'Europe', I always get results for Lille Europe (XDB).

How can one resolve this?

I'll move this to Travel Tools...

Open ended Google flight searches only work in the reverse (e.g. Origin = NYC / Destination = Europe) @:-)

Skyscanner is also cool for leaving open destinations.

Google Flight Prices
 

I'm looking take my mother to visit my sister in Brisbane just after the New Year flying business class, so I put in the dates in Google Flights and select the flights I want.

But when I click on where I can get these prices i.e. Expedia, eDreams or direct with the airline they are not the same as Google Flights quoted, they start around £2000 above the quoted price.

Am I doing something wrong or is there always price difference?

IF there's a £2000 difference I dare say you're DEFINITELY putting in something wrong.

See below

Image 1 £4870 round trip business class for 2 adults outbound
Image 2 £4870 round trip business class for 2 adults inbound
Image 3 £6765 with Expedia, £6940 with Qantas :confused:

Do not use the click through provided by Google it sometimes uses a cached link rather than a real time link (hence the price disparity you are seeing).

Try going to Emirates directly and see what price you get it. The price you are seeing in Google Flights is likely not the most updated price.

Almost certainly cached content in the ITA system. Sucks when it happens but not really much you can do about it.

ETA: Or Google is having trouble with the 718GBP surcharge per passenger that EK applies and only adds it in at the end of the fare selection.

Thanks for your replies.

I used Google Flights because it displyed/suggested cheaper departing dates which you don't get with Skyscanner which I will now use to compare prices.

Curious to learn a bit more about how Google Flights 'forces' flights.

This itinerary is $750 (at least at time of posting, in L class). It is an IAD-IST r/t, with a 20hr layover in LHR on the way there.
https://www.google.com/flights/?f=0#...ANCE;so=p;eo=e

How is Google Flights able to force this? I can't work it out on the airline sites, on ITA, Expedia, Kayak, etc.

Also, how come if you just search for IAD/WAS-IST r/t on Google Flights, it won't turn this up? Cheapest r/t shows as $838, and this one with the 20hr layover in LHR doesn't show.

Thanks.

New tabletized version of mobile Google Flights. Previous one is now classic Flights.

:td: New version seems to be aimed at the lay traveler. Can't seem to add multiple airports, flips between screens to add the airport (and doesn't show your current selection), price is moved to the right so it's harder to scan price and airline together, generally slower, clunkier, and wastes more screen real estate.

I am experiencing the same problem and am wondering if anyone has a solution.

Same here. It has never worked for me.

I need a replacement service now that Yapta is no longer reliable.

Alerts are starting to come for me.

First time in this thread, but come with a question....

For several days Google flights has shown a particular itinerary on American to be substantially cheaper than other options for the same dates. But when I try use the link to book on the AA website, I get an error message that "One of your flight's is no longer available or the fare has changed."

I've replicated it several times over several days. Is GoogleFlights really that slow to pick up fare availability in favor of feeding stale data?

I'm seeing similar (except I get a more generic, "Something went wrong
Our system is having trouble. Please try again or come back later.") when trying to book from Google Flights. Unfortunately, putting it through the AA multicity yields the fare in initial results, but selecting the fare just gives me, "The flight(s) or fare selected is no longer available. Please modify your request."

Given that I'm getting the unbookable fares on the AA site as well, I don't figure it's stale Google data. It's irritating as all heck regardless of the cause.