google.com/flights

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rjbraun
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google.com/flights

Post by rjbraun »

I've been using this site to monitor fares. How accurate and reliable do others find the site? My understanding is that one uses the site to monitor fares, but that one would then need to go elsewhere to actually purchase the ticket. In the handful of instances I've tried, I find the google.com fares much lower than what I can find on, say, the carrier's website. Of course, this is kind of annoying and frustrating! :x

Have others had similar experiences, or have people found the google site helpful and reliable?
SHB
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Re: google.com/flights

Post by SHB »

I have found that often purchasing tickets through the airlines website to be the worst way to go. I always check google flights, kayak, and cheapoair. If its not last minute most of those are within $10 of each other.

I'd be interested in hearing what other site people use but I've been pretty happy with Google flights.
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VictoriaF
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Re: google.com/flights

Post by VictoriaF »

I use Google flights to find airlines offering the best prices for my dates of travel and then I buy tickets directly from the airlines. I optimize on both cost and schedule, and I am willing to overpay for a better schedule.

Victoria
Inventor of the Bogleheads Secret Handshake | Winner of the 2015 Boglehead Contest. | Every joke has a bit of a joke. ... The rest is the truth. (Marat F)
Topic Author
rjbraun
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Re: google.com/flights

Post by rjbraun »

I just noticed the "Book" feature on google.com/flights. Though you can't actually buy the tickets from the site, it does list different options. You are even shown any additional surcharges. Pretty neat. :)
steve_14
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Re: google.com/flights

Post by steve_14 »

Depends. I recently booked some flights around SE Asia. Prices on the individual airline sites (Nok Air, HK Express, Air Asia) were often half or less of the best price Google and other search sites could come up with. Cutting out the middle man usually saves you $.
SHB
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Re: google.com/flights

Post by SHB »

International may be a different beast but domestics US flights 9 times out of 10 are much better through google flights and the like.
StaTiK
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Re: google.com/flights

Post by StaTiK »

Kayak all the way. It aggregates a ton of options, including a "hacker" option using multiple airlines to reach a destination, and has very handy filtering/sorting. My travel is usually for business so I have "no later than" arrival times and "no earlier than" return times making the filtering very handy.
The Wizard
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Re: google.com/flights

Post by The Wizard »

I've been playing with google/flights lately in addition to kayak and OnTheFly app (ITA Matrix).
They all have advantages, especially if you have some flexibility in which airports and which dates.
But eventually, I just go to the airline website to book the flights I choose...
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Crimsontide
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Re: google.com/flights

Post by Crimsontide »

I used Kayak until now :happy Amazing the things you can learn just by monitoring this site. I had no idea Google had added flights, very nice...
WendyW
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Re: google.com/flights

Post by WendyW »

VictoriaF wrote:I use Google flights to find airlines offering the best prices for my dates of travel and then I buy tickets directly from the airlines.
This ^

Once I've found my flight, I don't know any reason to book via Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity.
steve_14
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Re: google.com/flights

Post by steve_14 »

WendyW wrote:
VictoriaF wrote:I use Google flights to find airlines offering the best prices for my dates of travel and then I buy tickets directly from the airlines.
This ^

Once I've found my flight, I don't know any reason to book via Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity.
Yes, I only book directly through the airline. Cheaper prices (sometimes), better perks (choosing a seat), and fewer screw ups (Expedia messed up a relative's name when transmitting it to the airline once, truncating their name and appending "Mrs" to the end as if it were part of the name. They almost weren't allowed to fly).
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yukonjack
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Re: google.com/flights

Post by yukonjack »

I recently used google flights and found them to be pretty close on price for tickets to Spain. Although when I went directly to the Delta site the actual price was a bit lower. Google gets you in the ballpark and then you can refine your search on the airline's site.
rock_marmot3
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Re: google.com/flights

Post by rock_marmot3 »

Google Flight Search is only an airfare search engine, like Kayak, RouteHappy, Hipmunk, or ITA Matrix, which means that you don't buy directly from them, you just use them to find fares and then buy the ticket from the airline (or your travel agent, or whatever). They do have a button at the bottom of the search to link you to the airline's website for those airlines who support it (not all do).

Expedia, Priceline, and Orbitz, by contrast, are themselves travel agencies, authorized to resell tickets to you. In exchange for this service, they will often levy a small fee (though they'll often waive it in the hope of pushing you into higher-margin vacation package booking).

That said, no matter what tool you use to search for them, airfares are coming from of the same massive shared database. So they should generally all return the same options, especially for uncomplicated bookings, although there is occasionally something to be gained by searching in a more clever way.

I find that I do 95% of my flight searches on google flight search. The key difference between them and the others is that google will aggressively cache previously-searched-for fares in their own database, rather than querying the public database every time. This means that they're able to return results much, much, much faster than anybody else, which for me is the most important factor in usability. The downside is that because of this caching, they will every once in a while get into a situation where the price has changed since the last time they cached it, and so the price they show doesn't match the airline's own website. But I haven't found this to be very common, and easy to work around when it does happen.

The other 5% of the time I use ITA matrix, which allows you to search for extremely complicated bookings, and which displays the full fare rules and seat availability information, but which is really only useful if you're a bit of a travel nerd...
Iorek
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Re: google.com/flights

Post by Iorek »

I thought google bought ITA. Is there a difference between google flights and ITA's results?
Topic Author
rjbraun
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Re: google.com/flights

Post by rjbraun »

Thank you all for the feedback. I am happy to report that I have finally bought my airplane tickets. :beer

I spent days tracking fares on google. I guess one benefit to this was that I stumbled across some carriers / fares that I normally would have overlooked. In the end, I bought on kayak. While I've been familiar with and used them for a while, I think those people who raved about kayak helped me to look at them more closely.

When the flights I uncovered earlier appeared, I was ready to pounce. Kayak listed about eight purchase options. Kayak was first, followed by the carrier. Cost was virtually identical, so I opted for the carrier. But once I got to that site and my desired flights were found, the price was almost $200 / person, round-trip than what kayak had shown (~$1070). I figured that was that, but when I returned to the kayak website I decided to give kayak a try. I sure was surprised when the lower fare appeared! :D

I'm thinking the price discrepancy was an "error". On the carrier's site the price matrix showed the lower fare, but when you went to actually book the tickets a higher fare was shown. But, who knows; maybe not. I'm just happy to get the flights booked and hope that I don't spend too much time tormenting myself by continuing to track fares.
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