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Google Flights
- Justin_Time 14y agoI'm a big fan of https://www.google.com/flights/explorer https://www.google.com/flights/explorer, since it gives me an immediate picture of how far in advance I should book to get the lowest prices.
- usaphp 14y agoWOW I did not know about it, looks awesome! Thanks for sharing.
- holic 14y agoIf you have specific airports in mind, you can click the chart icon on the flights search page to display a similar price graph.
- ojbyrne 14y agoI find it interesting that it basically has the same function as Kayak Explore: http://kayak.com/explore http://kayak.com/explore - but with a completely different presentation.
- mda 14y agoNot exactly, this shows daily price changes through a few months, You cant see this in Kayak's interface.
- downey 14y agoIt's okay, but it's no Hipmunk.
- cynwoody 14y agoSort by agony, LOL! I like the time charts, too. Thanks. I didn't know about Hipmunk. I have been using mostly Kayak and, more recently, Google.
- _delirium 14y agoI like Hipmunk's interface better than Kayak's, but Kayak seems to have better data: there are sometimes good fares that appear in Kayak but not Hipmunk, while I haven't found the reverse to be true yet.
- goldfish 14y agoWe get our data from mostly the same sources, so this should almost never happen. (There are also lots of times we have better rates than Kayak, e.g. on Amtrak and Airbnb, which they don't have.) Next time you see this, could you email contact@hipmunk.com?
- usaphp 14y agoActually it's much better than hipmunk. I used to be a fanatic user of hipmunk. But once I tried google flights i immediately was amazed by its speed, browsing different dates is super fast and easy.
- neilk 14y agoAs with all things Google, it's an order of magnitude beyond what hipmunk does. If you keep the window open long enough you will actually see flights disappear if they fill up. I still think the hipmunk interface is more humane.
- acchow 14y agoGoogle Flights' instantaneous search allows you to freely explore the option space opening up new ways of travel planning. Free for spring break and don't know where to go? Set your travel dates and pan around the map looking for deals. Kayak doesn't even come close to this. At best, you can set the month of travel; useless for most busy people.
- jff 14y agoI tried using Hipmunk a few times, but the prices were always at least a hundred dollars more than if I had just gone to Orbitz.com and dealt with their crap interface--I've always found that Orbitz has prices at least as good as anywhere else, so I tend to judge against them. Google, on the other hand, gave me exactly what I needed at prices competitive to Orbitz. It was a bit disappointing that when I was done, I had to buy the tickets through the carrier's site, but it still found me a flight at a good time for a good price.
- photorized 14y agoHipmunk seems to be marking things up. For the few flights that I tried recently, tickets were $30..90 more than from the airline's own website. Oh, and getting tired of Himpunk's promoted ads on the site that shall not be named.
- trustfundbaby 14y agoI love hipmunk but they are resting on their laurels a little too long if you ask me, you still can't edit an individual search tab (I asked and was told to fiddle with the url values to edit the search). And you still can't move tabs around, plus Google flight actually makes it look really slow. That being said, it is rare that I can find a better rate than what I see on Hipmunk, and their agony ui is still frickin' amazing.
- frankdenbow 14y agoLove that you put in date ranges in Hipmunk, since I am usually not sure which days have the best deals and am not strongly tied to returning/leaving on a certain day
- taigeair 14y agoHow do you guys compare Hipmunk to Whichairline.com? I actually like the smaller startup's visualisations and results better than Hipmunk.
- mwexler 14y agoThere's presenting the existing data well (Google) and there is adding value to existing to make it more useful (Hipmunk). I find that Google's innovation for almost every one of their products is in saying "we have oodles of data, how can we display it effectively"? They have done well at collecting and quickly accessing large amounts of data, linking loosely coupled sets, and in some cases, adding meaning (image searches understand the concept of "bright" or "dim", for example). But I rarely see them taking the data they have and merging it in a way to create new meaning or value. Hipmunk, beyond co-opting a gantt chart, did this with their "agony" score. Google not only didn't try here, they didn't try for local search either, and just acquired Zagat for their score (and brand name and loyal following, etc.). And many startups offer meaning above and beyond that combined in the data: through their experience, their ability to merge context from being subject matter experts, or just their flexibility to experiment without a spotlight on them. Google tends to stop short of any of these. So, yes, it's no Hipmunk: it's a typically well done Google product taking hairy data, merging it up, and displaying it well. Doing more than that, however, is left to the rest of the world. (Though, one wonders why ITA didn't do some of these things before when they first created this better way of looking at flights a few years ago...)
- alec 14y agoBoth Hipmunk and Google Flight Search help you sort out bad flights in ways that other websites don't - Hipmunk calls this "agony". To see this in Google Flight Search, scroll down to the bottom of a results list, you'll see something like "123 longer or more expensive flights hidden. Show all." - these are the longer, no less expensive layovers that you probably don't care about.
- mwexler 14y agoLonger or more expensive is simply filtering. Agony is creating a new metric. I see those as different. Now, if the metric is useless or synonymous with some of it's underlying drivers, then you are right, nothing there. I find the agony score to be more useful than any small combo of filters, but perhaps that's just me.
- 14y ago
- gwillen 14y agoI don't use it because, last I checked, it's unable to handle what I think of as basic corner cases, like booking a roundtrip going out from one airport in a metro area and coming back to a different one.
- alec 14y agoIt does that now - click on the button that says 'round trip' and choose 'multi city'.
- gwillen 14y agoSee my self-reply.
- cynwoody 14y agoE.g., depart Chicago from O'Hare to Denver, then return to Chicago from Denver, arriving at Midway? Choose Multi-city, and specify specific airport codes at the originating / terminating metro area. E.g., American 1017 ORD to DEN on 7 Jan and Frontier 534 DEN to MDW on 14 Jan for $211.
- gwillen 14y agoSee my self-reply.
- gwillen 14y agoReplying to myself since I can't edit: I see two replies suggesting that what I want is a multi-city trip, but that's not the same thing. Flights will happily let me do the same search I can do on Orbitz, with my start/end city being "SF metro area, any airport". But unlike Orbitz, when I use that I can't book an itinerary that goes SFO-BOS-SJC, for example. (I don't want to search it as multi-city, because then I have to _manually_ try every combination of SFO/SJC/OAK until I find what's cheapest.)
- turbulents 14y agoLooks like this could be useful for planning out some potential mileage run destinations!
- alec 14y agoIf you do mileage runs, you probably know about matrix.itasoftware.com, but in case you don't - visit http://matrix.itasoftware.com/?showPricePerMile=true http://matrix.itasoftware.com/?showPricePerMile=true and then do your search to see and sort by price per mile.
- blhack 14y agoWhat is a mileage run?
- acchow 14y agoAvid frequent flyer miles collectors hunt for abnormally low cost fares which travel long distances (often due to multiple out-of-the-way stops). This results in a great cost per mile for them.
- bcn 14y agoSee flyertalk for more details and potential fares. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/mileage-run-deals/454485-welcome-mileage-run-forum-important-information-how-mr-forums-work.html http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/mileage-run-deals/454485-welc...
- sfaruque 14y agoUnfortunately it doesn't seem to support Asia yet.
- aquilax 14y agoNeither Europe
- mwilcox 14y agoDoesn't support New Zealand either
- bronxbomber92 14y agoWhat do you mean? I can book a flight from the US to Rome, Italy.
- acchow 14y agoOnly supports flights originating from US and Canada at the moment. Destination can be anywhere in the world.
- bronxbomber92 14y agoAh, I see. Strange it can only go one way (especially since it can book international round-trip flights).
- dotmanish 14y agoDo you sense the big Google conspiracy to deport all US HN-ers out?
- contingencies 14y agoI have it on reasonable authority that at least one X.25 era hacker has exploited ye-olde travel provider interfaces to: A) automatically detect and utilize cheap global routes B) brute force discount codes for global hotel chains
- shiven 14y agoCare to elaborate? I am missing context here. Do you mean a Google Flights employee is that hacker? Or is X.25 accessible to anyone with an Internet connection and knowledge of ye olde software running on green phosphorescent screens?
- contingencies 14y agoNothing to do with google flights. Just a fun note about the old CRS platforms generally.
- rogerbinns 14y agoFor some reason they don't have pricing information for Singapore Airlines, but do have the flights which are mostly filtered out because "unknown" sorts as the most expensive.
- daurnimator 14y agoLooks great; but doesn't support trips originating in australia... wtf
- JacobAldridge 14y agoWhy would anyone ever want to leave Australia? (Jokes the Aussie with the travel startup.)
- pan69 14y agoJust looked at your travel website. Very interesting. I'm also in Australia with an interest in the combo of travel & start-up. What exactly is it that you start up does?
- JacobAldridge 14y agoThe current focus of everydaydream holiday (www.everydaydreamholiday.com) is to entertain travel lovers who are not currently planning a holiday. And rather than an endless stream of newsletters or FB posts with random destinations, we are actually taking readers on a single, realistic holiday with input from locals. That's the focus so far. We launched less than 2 weeks ago, so we expect there to be evolution and change. [Edit: Feel free to drop me an email if you want to shoot the breeze about what you're up to as well.]
- dorian-graph 14y agoI noticed that too. For a good, similar website, try http://www.adioso.com/ http://www.adioso.com/ which is also an Australian startup, Melb based I think. (I'm from Brisbane)
- daurnimator 14y agoThanks; looks good; love the wide range of dates you can enter. Annoyances are inability to sort by flight length, search non-economy; or blacklist a certain airline.
- 14y ago
- shn 14y agoI just did try, and got an incredible quote for DTW-IST roundtrip for only $638. Funny thing is that when you go to the web sites it tells at the end gives twice the price. Seems like a joke. It does not really link to an actual sales opportunity.
- drivebyacct2 14y agoWow, just wow. I didn't know that I could apartment shop for this cheap. January just got more exciting.
- hsiaobrandon 14y agoAny comparisons to that one YC-funded company (Hipmunk or something)?
- brackin 14y agoHipmunk can't compete with anyone on price as they use prices directly from airlines vs a mix of travel sites and airlines. Hipmunk has a great interface & iPad app if you want to compare on flight "agony" and their hotels interface is very good.
- pm90 14y agoYou may not get the best deal/least troublesome flight from here. Well, at least for international flights. I was trying to book a flight from Chicago->Seoul, and the options showed at least $2000 for the cheapest flight, which involved a 33hr total journey through China and Japan. I then asked my Korean friends, who recommended a travel agent and they got me a $1700 ticket with only 17hrs direct flight
- tvirot 14y agoSame here. My travel agent can always find me cheaper international tickets than what I could find on the internet. Does anyone know exactly how this works? The best part is they can put me on a wait list for cheap tickets!
- JoshTriplett 14y ago> Same here. My travel agent can always find me cheaper international tickets than what I could find on the internet. Funny, I've always had the opposite experience: every time I've used a travel agent, they always found more expensive flights with worse timings (time of day, layover, etc), and I end up requesting specific flights based on what I've found online.
- jff 14y agoI've used a travel agent once; she found me a trans-continental flight for about $200 less than I could find anywhere else, but for some reason I've never tried calling again.
- ajays 14y ago> Does anyone know exactly how this works? Most travel agents on long-distance, well travelled routes work through consolidators. These consolidators buy tickets (or promise to buy tickets) in bulk far in advance, and then re-sell them later. This is what I've heard about segments like USA <-> India.
- tjmc 14y agoFor values of "brilliant" that originate in North America only...
- lucaspiller 14y ago++ I use Skyscanner here in Europe for regional and international flights, however really the prices are only useful as an indication. For example, one flight I found the cheapest option was Ryanair, but when I actually booked it the price was €10 cheaper than listed on Skyscanner.
- dtf 14y agoI used to find that Ryanair had a tendency to lowball the aggregators, and then whack on ridiculous extra charges at the end of a tedious and lengthy purchase process. Have they stopped doing that now?
- lucaspiller 14y agoI haven't noticed that recently. I'd guess because in July they changed the prices advertised to include the extra fees: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18718556 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18718556 Also last month they were forced to remove the 'you have to pay €12 to pay with a Visa card' policy, so now the fee is 2% for all cards. However, they now make the admin fee mandatory however you pay :) http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/holidays/article-2240292/Ryanair-imposes-new-2-credit-card-payment-charge-wraps-6-flight-admin-fee-online-prices.html http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/holidays/article-2240292/...
- aes256 14y agoThat's not just an aggregator thing. Ryanair (and similar airlines like easyJet) have long been guilty of advertising low headline prices, then tagging on all manner of fees. Add on the baggage fees, landing fees, priority boarding fees, tax, credit card fees, etc. and the price isn't so impressive.
- walshemj 14y ago
- roopeshv 14y agoi use bing flights for my flight needs, and probably that's the only MS service i ever use/used. I like bing flights just because of two checkboxes, and nothing else; the checkboxes to search nearby airports on departure and arrival destination. I also found cheapest or next to cheapest flights on bing for some reason.
- adambyrtek 14y agoBing Flights is just Kayak wrapped in a different user interface.
- te_chris 14y agoSky scanner is fantastic http://www.skyscanner.co.nz http://www.skyscanner.co.nz
- adambyrtek 14y agoIt's great for cheap airlines. For major carriers there are better tools (e.g. ITA Matrix).
- ajays 14y ago... and ITA Matrix was bought by Google, and its latest incarnation is Google Flights.
- waqf 14y agoMatrix hasn't gone anywhere (http://matrix.itasoftware.com/ http://matrix.itasoftware.com/). And it still does things that Google Flights doesn't (such as working outside North America).
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- Svip 14y agoIs it better than http://momondo.com/ http://momondo.com/ ?
- jasonlingx 14y agoRubbish, no flights coming out of Singapore
- mrslave 14y agoI have used it but I haven't actually used it.
- jamesmcn 14y agoLooks great. Light UI, responsive, low prices.
- geuis 14y agoSearched for New Zealand and got nothing. Searched for a specific city like Auckland or Christchurch and got matches. I am used to better results from Google.
- usaphp 14y agoIt's for US originating flights only. e.g. New York -> Paris will work, however Paris -> New York will not. But i guess they are adding additional counties.
- meric 14y agoThis cool flight search has a "by Google" on it. http://matrix.itasoftware.com http://matrix.itasoftware.com
- vijaykiran 14y ago.. because Google acquired ITA Software - http://googleblog.blogspot.nl/2011/04/ita-software-acquisition-cleared-for.html http://googleblog.blogspot.nl/2011/04/ita-software-acquisiti...
- chime 14y agoAlso check out http://www.google.com/hotelfinder/#search;l=key+west,+fl;d=2013-01-04;n=2;si=676776f6 http://www.google.com/hotelfinder/#search;l=key+west,+fl;d=2...
- gimbuser 14y agoThere are tons of international services like that, too bad Google didn't launch worldwide...
- tworats 14y agoOpened a few tabs with HN items in it. Booked my trip to SF, then started browsing the tabs. Hit this tab, tried it, found a flight for about $80 less than I just booked. Lesson learned: always read HN before doing actual work.
- jtheory 14y ago...I'm struggling to avoid downvoting this, just out of fear that someone might read this and take it seriously. :) Imagine... Benefit: saved $80 on a flight, once! Cost: OMG, did I just spend 2 hours reading about people doing interesting things, instead of doing interesting things? Again?
- rabble 14y agoSo sad to see matrix.itasoftware.com's amazing search engine get most of it's features ripped out and replaced with a pretty UI that does so little. For folks who like hipmonk? Do you really travel? Their search engine also fails to find most good fares. Pretty but useless. Most people who are serious use expertflyer.com and matrix.itasoftware.com to find fares. Yes you have to learn a bit about how air fares are constructed, but this is hacker news not consumer news isn't it?
- rubyrescue 14y agoI can't agree more. hipmunk is totally useless for truly finding good fares. matrix is the only site i start with, then i go to sites that aren't on ITA (jetblue/southwest/some south american airlines like gol) but i try to avoid those airlines anyway (and like you i'm usually travelling internationally so they're not relevant)
- mda 14y agoMay I ask which feature in Matrix you like is not available in Google Flights?
- sareon 14y agoI like being able to select a number of possible departure airports (Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, Detroit) and then my days I like being able to say +/- 2 days.
- MertsA 14y agoYou can do a lot more than that in Google Flights, just hit the plus sign on the right side of the departure box and you can add as many airports as you want, ditto for the arrival airport. Also, for the plus or minus 2 days just click on the little bar graph at the top right of the page instead of map view and it will show you months on either side. That feature is probably one of the best, there is a huge difference in prices depending on the date.
- jrockway 14y ago
- asdkl234890 14y agoA few days ago my gf tried to book a flight. Like most people, she starts with googleing flight tickets. And sees Google flights for the first time and starts using it. Gets to the point where Google kicks you off to the airline's own page, and that's where the trouble starts. She is forced to pick seats but can't, because the only ones available require being a specially background checked and known passenger. Eventually she gives up. Then she googles Expedia. A few minutes later she has her tickets. Yesterday she printed out the boarding passes complete with her seat assignment. On the same flight Google Flighs couldn't book.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- cloudwalking 14y agoI'm confused. In your second paragraph you say the airline page won't let your gf book the flight, but in your third paragraph you blame it on Google. Sounds to me that the airline webpage has additional (read: useless?) security features that Expedia doesn't have.
- CKKim 14y agoIt is a confusingly-written comment, and I think the final bit especially is simply the wrong wording for what the author means, but beneath all that there's still a valid criticism of Google Flights over Expedia. The unambiguous part is that Google Flights failed to account for the nature of the seats it had identified as "available", and went ahead with the recommendation when in fact they were not appropriate. The unclear part is whether Expedia did actually find the same flight and seats (as the author appears to be saying) but has some way around the security features (an agreement with the airline?), or whether Expedia was aware of the inappropriateness of the seats Google Flights recommended and in fact provided different ones on a different flight. It would be nice if the parent had been clearer in the explanation but it seems that either way: Expedia 1, Google 0.
- jrockway 14y ago
- tathagatadg 14y agoHave you tried https://www.google.com/experimental/gmailfieldtrial https://www.google.com/experimental/gmailfieldtrial was pleasantly surprised seeing "my flights", "my hotel reservations" etc ..
- ccleve 14y agoThis isn't remotely as good as Kayak. Kayak allows you to search for flights that are +- a few days around your desired dates, and shows you fares on a calendar. Indispensable when you're just exploring prices.
- mda 14y agoThere is an interface for exploring prices on calendar, click on the "Lowest prices" icon next to the map icon. It shows changes in the prices when you change dates etc and its usually very fast.
- gokulk 14y agoI find the ticket prices too high .. wonder if it just gets the prices from the vendor websites or has some special arrangement with them.
- silentnight1 14y agoWhat is this? Hidden Google spam? How can a mediocre (at best) site like this get front page? Hope mods hellban all who up voted this.
- taigeair 14y agoIt's a pretty cool release though. I'm liking whichairline.com quite a lot these days because of it's visualisations. I also use kayak and hipmunk. Pretty excited about what Google can do in this space.
- niketdesai 14y agoThis is a partial product still being built (as it's domestic at the moment and will obviously go international I'm sure). But the speed and data quality is where they will win out. The faster the interface allows people to do what they want to do: many searches until an ideal candidate is found. Other sites appear slow and most of the information they bring back is useless (to the user) so speed is the name of the game. Turns out Google is pretty good at that game. Just my thoughts.
- EToS 14y agoSorry, flights from United Kingdom are not currently supported.
- Harj 14y agoThis year I left booking my tickets back to the UK for the holidays until the last minute. The cheapest fare I could find myself, after what I considered to be extensive searching, was $1800. I ran a contest on Flightfox (http://flightfox.com http://flightfox.com) and offered a $49 finders fee. Someone found me a fare for $1000 with only one stop (vs two on the fare I found).
- euccastro 14y agoTotally besides the point, but why $49? I thought the point of ending prices with 9 was to make them look lower. You wanted the opposite, so perhaps $50 would have worked better?
- Inetgate 14y agoUnfortunately, from Japan is not supported.
- catcherintherye 14y agohttp://www.skypicker.com http://www.skypicker.com is really good for the European flights. What do you think?
- bdcravens 14y agoThought this had been around a while - used it to plan flights for my last 2 conferences (3+ months ago)
- chrisringrose 14y agoThis is INCREDIBLE! Gonna use this all the time now