How to Use Google Flights to Find Cheap Flights

Google flights is a popular brand name to search for flights online and help travellers to purchase their travelling tickets from third-party online airline agencies having known the possible price of the flight/ticket to book.

Google flights have every detail information you need to know before you proceed with your flight booking. However, here in this guide today, you will learn every relevant information on Google flights such as how to get cheap flights with the Google flights, how to find and track flights using the Google flights portal.

If you have been using Google flights before now to find cheap flights web portal to book your flight this guide will further widen your horizon. This post will also provide a DIY guide to exploring Google flights to find cheap flights and book your flight from anywhere around the world.

What is Google Flights?

Google flights is a web portal to find cheapest flights information with a link to book flights from third party websites. Google itself does not offer flight booking service.

However, Google flights give information about booking flight, currency conversion before you make your flight payment to know the actual payment in your local currency, hotel reservation, map view of the location, best departure flights, weather report, flight alert report in the case of ghosting,  and other information.

Suppose you are leaving a particular location which you set up with the Google flights, say, from Lagos to London, you can check your flight status using the Google flights, have an idea of where you are going to using the Google flights with the Google Map. With the Google flight map explores feature you can compare and contrast flight fare between different locations to identify the cheapest rather than sticking to a sticking location and be looking for cheap flights. The map view shows prices of all possible destination once you have set up the departure date and search for cheap flights.

Google flights have a lot of features that makes booking cheap flights ticket very easy with the right and appropriate travelling agent. With this guide, you will get to know how to make the most out of the Google flights app to find cheap flight tickets.

While Google flights have the best features to find cheap flights from third parties travelling company, Google flights also have some advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, before we’ll go into detail about Google flights features and how to make effective use of the features, let’s first consider some changes you may want to take note while using the flights’ web portal by Google.

Advantages of Google Flights

There has been a lot of changes recently in the Google flights design. It’s more like overhauling the old design and rolling out a new design. However, from experiences, here are some of what you will enjoy using Google flights design to find cheap flights tickets.

1. The new Google flights design is faster than any other cheap flights search engines and display months worth of fare in milliseconds. If you are looking for the best cheap flights search engines that offer fast user-experience, Google flights stood out.

2. Another feature of the Google flight is the wide display of cheap flights in a 12 Calendar month. With the Google flights search engine, you can view up to 12 months cheap flights fare in a single search.

3. What other things could be more interesting when you are searching for a cheap flight than a flight search engine that shows up to 7 cheap flights origins and 7 different destination airports? This is what you will enjoy when you use the Google flights search engine to find cheap flights. 

4. Google flights offer Google Flights Explore map which allows you to see the cheapest place you can fly to from your airport depending on the date range you selected on the map. With this feature, you can see a whole country flight fare on the map with the cheapest highlighted in green colour.

Disadvantages of Google Flights

Google flights search engine has a handful of demerit which may want you to turn to other flights search engines to find cheap flights.

1. As good as the Google flights search engine is, it’s not the best departure flights search engine that shows the lowest flights fares from airlines. There are some other cheap flights search engines that show the cheapest flights compared to Google flights.

2. Sometimes, the giant cheap tickets finder is not the best source to turn to, the online travelling agencies that are not as big as the Google flights offer cheapest flight information. This alone does not make the service offered by Google the best in this aspect.

3. Another demerit of the Google flights search is that the service doesn’t find flight fare mistakes. Perhaps, they are big, but it is a deficiency. This is what makes most of the small airline travelling agencies gain ground from travellers because they help travellers by finding error-free cheap flight airline sources.

4. Let me add this disadvantage to it. Google flights left travellers that are searching for a cheap flight with false information sometimes. At a point, you may find out that the Google flights show the rate of a particular flight from one location to another only to find out that the price has been increased, yet, the Google flight will not notify you if flight alert isn’t configured. Or, you will only be notified when you get to the flight booking point only to find out that the initial price has been increased. Although, this happens once in a while, it worth mentioning so that when you choose to go with the Google flights to find cheapest flight this will not sound ridiculous to you.

Types of Google Flights Class

Google flights search offer 4 different types of flight class. And you are able to find cheap flights on all the four classes. These are;

1. Economy
2. Economy premium
3. Business 
4. First-class

Google flights search engine provide an incentive to identify these types of flights when you want to checkout to cheap flights sites. Toward the end of this guide, we will discuss how to identify each of these flights types when you see a cheap flight that you want to book.

DIY Google Flights

Tactically, you need to know some Google flights hacks to find cheap flights and explore the flights’ search engine. Therefore, in this second part, you will know everything reasonable about the Google flights starting from finding the cheapest flights to promo information and down to hotels booking.

How to Change Currency Google Flights.

The first thing to do when you are looking for cheap flights on Google flights is to check whether the currency is in your preferred currency. This will help you know the flight fare  equivalent in your local currency.

1. Firstly, go to www.google.com/flights on your computer browser or a mobile browser (I’ll suggest a tablet) and click on the “menu” option to the top left. Or the “hamburger”, whichever you call it.

2. Scroll down the vertical menu that’s opened when you clicked on the “menu” option beside the “Google” logo, and click on “change currency”. You will be taken down to the list of all available currencies, here you have to click on your choice of currency. Meanwhile, by default, the flights’ currency is “USD”.

There is no need to change it though but you might want to change it to know the equivalent in your local conversion.

How to Change Language on Google Flight

The official Google flights language is “English”. But, you can change it to your official language when you want to search and book cheap flights.

1. From the Google flights web portal, you will see the “hamburger” option located at the top right very close to the “Google” logo. A new vertical interface with flight information will appear.

2. Now, scroll down the vertical interface and click on ” Change Language”. Instantly you will be taken to the “Language” interface where you have over one hundred languages to select from.

3. Your flight information will appear. Here you will see flight information such as trip, economy or premium economy or business or first class. And you will also see the country location on Google Map below. There is also an option to explore Google Map. Keep reading you will learn how to explore it.

How to Set Departure and Arrival Location on Google Flights.

This feature allows you to monitor the time take to the flight from your current airport to the location airport that you are going to.

This is how you can set your departure and arrive location…

First and foremost, you need to go to Google flights homepage and login if you are prompted to. Now, enter the departure country where you see “locations”, you can even select it from the map if you really know how to explore it. In the “Where to” column, type the country where you are going to. Click on the “Calendar” menu and a pop up will appear, select the appropriate date when your flight will take off and click on the second date option to set your arrival time.

You need to know that when you are setting your starting airport, you can put from one to seven airports in the column separated by a comma. For instance, if you want to book cheap flights to European country, you can input “start point” as ” “LHR, CDG, AMS, CPH, BCN, FCO, MXP” to see the possible location of the cheapest flights from your current location, say from Chicago or London to the likes of Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Rome, or Milan.

Meanwhile, when a city has more than an airport, they’ll have a city code. A good illustration is; NYC (New York City) or WAS (Washington DC).

How to Select Date on Google Flights

Google flights let you find that for cheapest flights. For up to 2 months, you will see the price of cheap flights range on one page and you will know when to book your flight if you ever find a cheap flight.

1. To find the cheapest flight date, click on the “Google flights departure date box”. A two months Calendar information will appear showing the cheapest date to book your flight. You will see each date with flight fare and you will be able to decide which flight fare is cheapest. To know the cheapest flight date, pay more attention to the green colour.

When you want to find cheap flights using the Google flights search engine, only the result for the date you typed will be displayed. And cheapest flights are denoted by green colour to be able to shift your attention from ordinary day flight fare to when there is flight promo that reduces the flight fare for all travellers.

However, dates that are not captured by the “departure date” will not be included in the flight fare. While it’s possible that cheaper flights will be available in the later months, Google flights will not capture it since it’s not instructed to do so.

For detail information about the cheapest flights fare, once you have selected the departure date and the date you want to return, more detail information about the flight fare which include time will appear below it. At this point, Google flights still decide for you to make sure you get the best deal.

The cheapest flights fare are displayed first after considering flight route and price. You can choose otherwise though, but, the “best departure flight” fare will be on top while others follow. Meanwhile, your flight time is in your local time. So, if the “best departure flights” time is +1, it’s already in your local time. So, take note so that you will not miss your flight. And the implication is that your flight is the next day. If you see +5, and you choose to book the flight due to the fare and convenience on your schedule, it means that your flight is in 5 days time in your local time.

How to Book Flights from Google Flights?

What Google flights do is to make sure you have the cheapest flight deal and be able to book them at the appointed time. Therefore, if you have got the best flight deal and you need to make your booking here is your guide.

Upon deciding on your “best departure flight” and date, you will need to click on the choice of the date you want to depart. Next, you will be prompted to choose when to return from the journey. Each trip differs, a roundtrip will appear different from one way or multi-cities. You can always change your flight departure location and time before booking. But, once you booked your flight it might be difficult to cancel without being charged except if you meet the terms and condition for cancelling booked flights.

When you are booking flights with the cheapest flights on Google flight, flight fares include taxes. So, if you are charged $80 for a roundtrip, the fare has included tax. There will be no additional fee to be paid except if you want to book a hotel from Google flights. 

So, when you find a booking option that won’t empty your wallet, you will need to click on it after which you will be taken to your booking option. Once you click on the option to book from you will be taken to the booking checkout where you will be prompted to make your flight payment.

Note: Google flights isn’t an airline or an online travel agency. Rather, a platform where you find and book flights from third parties. The Google flight provide information about the cheapest flights and best flights departure time to all travellers. So, you shouldn’t expect to buy your flight ticket from www.google.com/flights.

What to do When Experiencing “Ghosting”?

Ghosting is seeing that a particularly cheap flight is available but you are not able to book it or the price has changed. So, what should you do afterwards? Back out or find a solution to book it. A lot of things can happen when you are experiencing “flight Ghosting”.

1. Price can jump and you will not be told.
2. The flight might no longer be available and you will not be left with vital information about it.

So, how do you fix this when you already see the cheapest flight you can book via Google flight and later got to know that the information is no longer valid (ghosting)?

1. When you already see a cheap flight fare you can afford and find out that it’s a decoy, the only way to get the deal is to put a call through to the airline and explain the situation of things. If you are lucky enough, you may get the old flight fare for your deal.

2. If the above didn’t walk, try another date to see whether there is another swift deal. And if there is none, extend the date to see if there are other cheap flights you can grab.

3. Also, go to either Priceline or Momondo with the ghosting date to see if it can still be booked. Both Momondo and Priceline are travel fare aggregator.

Google Flight Explore Map

You can view an entire country on Google Maps view when you are searching for the best flight fare on the Google flights search engine. This feature is hidden though, but, if you know how to explore it, you can get the best of your cheap flight deal before you opt in for it.

When you pull up the flight search information, only provide departure city and date information and leave “destination” unfilled and click on the “Search” blue button.

Now, Google flights will pop up a map view and take you to the “flight” menu on the vertical option on the left interface. You can extend the price range and all city flight fare will be displayed. Take note of the green colour that indicates the cheapest flight (s). And when you find the cheapest flight and location you can click on “view flight”, to know the current “best departure flights” and other departure flights.

How to Track Flights

Google flights allow you to track and manage flights once you have successfully booked your flight from a reliable online airline agency.

1. Go to https://www.google.com/flights on your web browser. 

2. Navigate to “Tracked Prices” under the Google flights search area and select “View All” to manage all your tracked ticket.

3. All your “tickets” will appear on the screen. Scroll the page until you find the tick you wish to track. Here you have an option to delete tracked tickets, turn off the ticket notification, and see the booking option for the flight.

This unique option in Google flights allows you to manage and track flights ticket booked on the third party website that you go through the flight search engine on Google.

How to Filter Google Flight Result

With Google flights, you can filter your flights search to only get the result that you are interested in. What you can filter include;

• Number of stops
• Layover duration
• Which (if any) connecting airports
• Price ceiling
• Flight times
• Which airline(s) and/or airline alliance(s)
• The total length of the flight

These filters are located below the departure date boxes.

How to Identify Basic “Economy” on Google Flights.

Before you finalize your flight booking you can easily identify whether it is the basic economy or not. Meanwhile, before start configuring your cheap flights’ search, you can choose the flight plan you want to book. However, if this is not done before you find the cheap flights that meet your need you can still find out whether or not it’s a basic economy flight.

Once you have filled all the necessary information you needed to find cheap flights to book to your destination and the final trip price and link to book the flight has shown, look closely to the top just beside round trip or multi-city under departure and destination cities, a suitcase indicating the class of travel will show whether the trip is economy or first class. 

With this, you will know whether you are flying first-class or not. If it’s business class you will also know with the information in the suitcase icon.

For more information about your travel class, click on the suitcase icon and a box containing all the explanation will appear. The box will also show how much you need to pay to book the flight. You will also have information such as the number of the person you are book for and whether there is luggage to expect while boarding the plane.

How to get Update on Fair Google Flights Fare.

Google can easily keep you posted once there is a cheap flight deal available that you can book. These flights alert from Google will send an email to you to notify you that there is a cheap flight deal you can benefit from.

1. Go to Google.com/flights to set your departure date and destination cities.
2. Find “Track Price” when the search result appears. You can also filter the result to reduce the information.
3. Click on the “Track Price” icon to turn the option on.
4. Sign in to your Google account if you have not done so. 
5. A small box will appear at the bottom will appear with an option to “view all” to see the list of flights that you are tracking.

Now you will be notified once the price of the flight you are tracking changes. This feature saves you from flight ghosting. You will also know when to book in case the flight fare dropped.

Google Flights Frequently Asked Questions

Here are the answers to some questions that may be puzzle to you when you are searching for cheap flights using the Google flights search engine.