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Google Unveils Flight Search

Posted by Soulskill on from the where's-the-no-loud-babies-checkbox dept.

Google announced today the availability of Flight Search, the product of their acquisition of ITA Software last year. "Starting today, when you search for flight information on Google, for example 'flights from Chicago to Denver,' you will see a 'Flights' link in the left-hand panel. This link leads to our new Flight Search feature, and is offered in addition to the flight schedules which have been available since May." Google says they're continuing to develop the service, and added that the results are "not influenced by any paid relationships."

10 of 69 comments (clear)

  1. Not ready for the mile-high club by blair1q · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's also not influenced by any results.

    I just checked a 1-stop round trip I booked last week, and instead of the dozens of options that Expedia and Travelocity offered, this thing gave me bupkis.

    It also tried to force my local airport into the From box, even when I had entered another. How can I fly from two airports two thousand miles apart?

    Consider this a Google pre-Alpha release...

    1. Re:Not ready for the mile-high club by Colonel+Korn · · Score: 2

      It's also not influenced by any results.

      I just checked a 1-stop round trip I booked last week, and instead of the dozens of options that Expedia and Travelocity offered, this thing gave me bupkis.

      It also tried to force my local airport into the From box, even when I had entered another. How can I fly from two airports two thousand miles apart?

      Consider this a Google pre-Alpha release...

      It claims my local airport, with about 20 flights to major hubs daily, has 0 flights anywhere. The interface updates quickly, which is nice, but the level of information available just can't compete with Bing.

      --
      "I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
    2. Re:Not ready for the mile-high club by blamanj · · Score: 4, Informative

      From the Google blog:

      You may notice that at the moment we include a limited number of U.S. cities and show results for round-trip economy-class flights only.

    3. Re:Not ready for the mile-high club by blair1q · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Much more fun to rush out the crazy failure mode, and then not provide in-tool documentation, but expect everyone to have read J. Random Blog for training.

  2. Does this mean Google Maps will update? by Lord_of_the_nerf · · Score: 4, Funny

    Because I'm getting sick of Jet Skiing across the Atlantic Ocean.

  3. Bing? by mr100percent · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So Google is finally copying Bing's features?

    I don't quite mind, if Google starts copying Wolfram Alpha we may get LCARS one day.

    1. Re:Bing? by blair1q · · Score: 2

      And if it starts copying Cleverbot, we may get freakin' Unicorns one day...

    2. Re:Bing? by artor3 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Hahaha, wow. Someone points out, truthfully, that Bing has had this feature for a while now and gets modded as a troll for it. Stay classy, Slashdot.

  4. Bing! by adisakp · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I know I'll get modded down for the but Microsoft's Bing search engine has been doing flight searches quite nicely for a time. Type in a flight query with dates and it will have a selection to choose matching flights at the top of your search results. You can even limit by take off or arrival times and it has a pretty good "price predictor" to tell you whether to buy now or wait (and what is the likelihood of the cost going down). They have good price history tools and charts too.

    If you want to find a good price on a domestice flight, the price history is great to see what days the airlines "price pulse" that route.

    1. Re:Bing! by chrb · · Score: 2

      It is true that you can search flights on Bing www.bing.com/travel/flight, but if you check the results at the bottom of the page it says "Results powered by KAYAK.com". So technically it's not Bing's search engine that is giving you the results - the Bing page is just a front end to Kayak's search engine. Does it matter? Maybe the user experience is similar, but it says something that Microsoft outsourced their travel search engine instead of developing it inhouse.

      I've had good results with SkyScanner. In particular, their date drop down allows you to select "view whole month", which will show the cheapest flights by day, and they manage to bypass and scan the budget airline sites that try to block flight search engines (e.g. the world's largest international carrier Ryanair is notorious for this). It shows the flight with fees and confirms the price before providing you with a link to the actual vendor. And you don't need to register with their site or buy the tickets through their site - it's just a search engine.