Find The Cheapest Airfare with Google Flights

Google Flights is the best air travel search site because of its fast load times and ease of comparing destinations and travel dates. Google recently updated its interface, providing even more features for narrowing your travel search to find the cheapest airfare. It involves a bit more work and patience on your part, but the payoff is well worth it.

Unlike other travel deal websites, you cannot book airfare directly through Google Flights. You’ll still need to book through the airline’s website, but Google Flights will definitely help you find the cheapest airfare out there in the shortest amount of time. This article will explain why Google Flights is the best airfare search site and how you can easily maneuver around the new interface to travel further and cheaper. 

WHY I LOVE GOOGLE FLIGHTS

Whether you’ve got that spontaneous wanderlust or a specific destination in mind, Google Flights can help you compare destinations, travel dates and prices with just the click of a button.

IF YOU HAVE A SPECIFIC TRAVEL DESTINATION IN MIND

Here’s an example of how to use Google Flights for a specific travel destination. If you are traveling to New York City, there are several airports nearby to choose from to fly in and out. If you use other airfare search websites or the direct airline website, you often have to individually search for airfare to/from each airport in the area, then compare prices. In Google Flights, you choose the origin airport (or several) with round-about travel dates, then destinations worldwide will appear on a map. Zoom into the New York City area and you can see how much the different prices are to JFK, Newark, Long Island, Stamford, Philadelphia, etc.

You may be thinking, why would I want to fly all the way into Philly when I need to be in New York City? Well, that’s an easy one. If flying into Stamford will save you $200 roundtrip, it might be worth a bit longer train ride to get into the city. That’s more money in your pocket for other activities. You’ll probably even discover some airports that you didn’t even know existed. I know I have.

FLEXIBLE TRAVEL DESTINATION OR DATES

If you’re like me and ask yourself “where can I travel the cheapest this summer?”, then Google Flights is DEFINITELY for you. When I have a long weekend coming up or just some time-off to use, I will type in my potential travel dates and search worldwide to see where the best deals can be found. 

Once you select a destination, Google Flights will show you cheap airfare calendars and graphs to compare travel dates all on one screen. If your dates are flexible, this is a great feature to see if it would be cheaper to leave a few days earlier or later. 

I will now run through how to use all of the features Google Flights offers to help you find the cheapest airfare.

HOW TO EFFECTIVELY USE GOOGLE FLIGHTS TO FIND THE CHEAPEST AIRFARE

When you first click onto the landing page, you’ll see a search engine and a map with several random destinations and prices listed. Google will pick up your current location and automatically show you some of the best current flight deals to get your vacation imagination running.

If you know where and when you want to travel, enter your destination info into the engine. Click ‘search’, and numerous airfare results will appear. You can pass this next section and jump down to “once you’ve selected a destination”

EXPLORE MAP SEARCH OPTIONS

If you want to have a little fun, click on the Explore Map to view 1000’s of potential travel destinations. The system will provide default travel dates, as well as Roundtrip, 1 passenger, and Economy search settings. You can change those in the upper left corner of the screen.

Play around with zooming in and out across the map to see various travel prices. One handy feature that Google Flights provides is showing the price difference between non-stop and connecting flights. Often, you can find the cheapest airfare by connecting, if you’re okay with a bit longer travel times. In the upper right of the screen you’ll see 5 dropdown menus. These are hugely beneficial for narrowing your flight search.

Here are some of the air travel constraints to make your trip as cheap and convenient as possible:

1. LIMIT THE NUMBER OF LAYOVERS YOU’LL HAVE TO ENDURE.

The “stops” setting is automatically set to “any number of stops”. I change this to “1 stop or fewer”. Otherwise, results can come back with 2 or 3 stops and travel times over 30 hours each way. I usually don’t have time for long layovers, but if you do, this is a great opportunity to explore an extra city for no extra cost. What I mean is, you can sometimes find layovers for 8-20 hours, which allows you enough time to leave the airport and do a quick city tour. 

2. CHOOSE A PRICE RANGE THAT WORKS FOR YOU.

By clicking on the “price” dropdown menu, you can set a maximum for how much you’re willing to spend for a roundtrip or one-way flight. The search engine will only show you flights under your maximum. The max price can be set as low as $100.

3. SET SPECIFIC TAKE-OFF AND LANDING TIMES. 

For both the outbound and return, you can set what time frame you’d like the flight to take-off or land by. Personally, I like taking red-eyes when traveling internationally, so I can constrict the results to only flights taking off in the evening.

4. STAY LOYAL TO YOUR ALLIANCES.

As a member of several airline mileage programs, this is one of my favorite features. If you regularly fly a certain airline, like American Airlines, you can set your search results to only show flights that are part of that air alliance. In this case, One World. This way, you can book with points or at least make sure to acquire miles for that vacation. Google Flights is only a flight deal finder, not booker, so you’ll still need to go directly to the airline’s website to purchase your flights.  If you’re not familiar with what an airline alliance is, check out this article.

5. BOOK DIFFERENT AIRLINES EACH WAY.

You probably won’t need to change the settings under “more” unless you are looking to fly on the same airline roundtrip. Often you can find the cheapest airfare by flying different airlines.

ONCE YOU’VE SELECTED A DESTINATION

Once you select a destination, you will be redirected to the flight time comparison page. Google Flights automatically shows you options that they feel are the best trade-off between price and convenience, based on factors such as duration, # of stops, and airport changes during layovers. There are several great features on this page to find the flights that work best for your time and budget. Here’s a compilation of my favorite settings:

COMPARING CHEAP TRAVEL DATES

There are three options for comparing prices based on travel dates.

1. At the top of the page, next to the origin and destination, click on the departure date.

This will bring up another window that shows the cheapest possible roundtrip price when leaving on a specific day. The dates with the cheapest airfare will be highlighted in green. Once you select a certain departure date, roundtrip prices will appear for every travel date. Once again, the cheapest return dates will appear in green.

2. The second option is to click on the “dates” flight insight box, which brings you to an XY chart filled with a bunch of prices based on corresponding travel dates. This chart makes it extremely easy to compare various departure and return dates over a select date range.

3. Option #3 is to search by length of stay using the “price graph” flight insight feature. If you plan on taking a 3-day trip, for example, set that in the search engine. Google then uses its analytics to show you what typical travel trends are like for a 3-day trip over the next few months. This setting is extremely helpful if you’re not quite at the ready-to-book stage, but want to get an idea of when might be the cheapest time to get away.

SEARCH NEARBY ORIGIN & DESTINATION AIRPORTS

This is my absolute favorite feature on the new Google Flights site. If you didn’t use the Explore Map to search for nearby airports with potential cheaper airfare, you can add airports to your search results on this page as well.

What’s even more useful, is that you can add additional Origin airports to the search as well. This will give you options to fly in and out of different airports so you can keep more money in your pockets.

 COMPARE BAGGAGE FEES

A fantastic feature included with the new Google Flights interface is that you can opt-in to include baggage prices into search results. We all know how airlines love to tack on these extra “convenience” charges for bags, seats, or printing boarding passes. Google Flights is helping you decide whether booking with an affordable airline, like Spirit, or using Basic Economy fares that don’t include bags, actually end up being cheaper. Sometimes a slightly more expensive fare is well worth it, if it includes bags, seat selection and ticket changes.

Currently, they only provide data for carry-on bags, but checked bag information will be added to the site soon.

TRACK PRICES

Once you’ve decided where you want to travel and when, you can set the “track prices” module to alert you by email when prices for those selected dates drop. This is a great option if you have some time to spare before booking and departing.

PLAN YOUR TRIP WITH CITY GUIDES

If you haven’t heard, Google has now added its own Trip Advisor city guides. Click on the “tips” button to be directed to Google’s travel guide for your designated destination or to the Google Trips downloadable app. In the app, you can customize your trip by choosing from hundreds of things to do and places to eat, and even save your travel documents. 

RECAP OF HOW GOOGLE FLIGHTS HELPS YOU FIND THE CHEAPEST AIRFARE

1. Compare flight prices by date, time, or destination with just one-click

2. Use the Explore Map to see where you could travel worldwide

3. Include nearby outboard and return airports into your search results

4. Set the maximum price you feel comfortable paying

5. Track prices

6. Compare bag prices

7. Limit the number of layovers you want to take, or search for longer layovers

8. Search for future travel trends