Booking cheap travel starts and ends with Google Flights, which is why Gunnar and Kyle devoted a full episode of the podcast to how to use our favorite website - including some of the advanced features that can help you find the cheapest fares on the planet and help you book flights like a pro. The guys go over the basics before digging into next-level features like Explore, Alerts, and plenty of other details that set Google Flights apart as the best travel tool out there.
Booking cheap travel starts and ends with Google Flights, which is why Gunnar and Kyle devoted a full episode of the podcast to how to use our favorite website - including some of the advanced features that can help you find the cheapest fares on the planet and help you book flights like a pro. The guys go over the basics before digging into next-level features like Explore, Alerts, and plenty of other details that set Google Flights apart as the best travel tool out there.
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00:00 - Elevator pitch: Why should you use Google Flights?
02:50 - Dan & Terry welcome us back from the Andaz Costa Rica
03:40 - The Extra Mile: How to use Google Flights like a pro
23:10 - A word from our sponsor: Saily!
24:10 - A word from our sponsor: Monarch!
25:15 - Google Flights 401: Explore, Price Alerts & and more
41:00 - What about PointsPath or Seats.Aero browser extensions?
45:00 - What did Gunnar use before Google Flights?
Produced and edited by Sylvia Thomas
Video editing by Kyle Thomas
Show music: “All That” by Benjamin Tissot
Yo, welcome to the show. I'm your host, Gunnar Olsen, a travel reporter and flight deal analyst here at Thrifty Traveler. And with me as always, he's the executive editor of Thrifty Traveler, a true Google Flights goblin. He gets freaky with his filters. It's Kyle Potter. Kyle, welcome to the show. There's so many problems with that last sentence.
Okay, today we are devoting an episode to Google Flights because it is the most important and powerful travel search engine that exists, especially if you know how to use all of the advanced features. We're gonna dissect all of those, including Google Flights Explore, Google Flights price alerts, and those all important filters so you can only see the fares that you wanna book, not the ones you don't.
But first, Kyle, I need to find something out from you. Uh, if you wanted to convince me or any traveler to use Google Flights in an elevator, what's the one feature you'd use to convince them? How often do you talk about Google Flights in elevators?
I just don't talk in elevators, period, so that also brings Google Flights down to zero.
Oh. There's two answers to this. Uh, I think the most important one is just the price calendar. So no matter what fare you're looking at, you can pop up two months of availability and then click through, and Google Flights will highlight in green the cheapest dates. I think that's part of the most important way of reframing how people think about booking travel, to be able to, you know, depart on that Tuesday the week prior instead of, you know, the Monday, the week of, in order to save, you know, hundreds if not thousands of dollars on tickets.
I think the thing that really blows people's minds is Google Flights Explore. To be able to enter your home airport, pop up a map, and scan across the globe and see the cheapest places for those times when you just need to get away, you wanna go somewhere cheap. You know you wanna get to Europe, you don't really care where you fly into as long as you can train or plane to your final destination.
Google Flights Explore is invaluable. I'm gonna turn it on you. I never get to find something out from you. I feel like when I started here almost eight years ago, when you started here five years ago, Google Flights was still like we were carnival barkers for this stuff. Like, "You gotta use Google Flights."
People'd be like, "What? What is that?" I feel like in the last couple of years alone, Google Flights has truly gone mainstream, where more people are using it than ever. Do you agree?
Yeah, I think so. I, I mean, maybe we're biased because we've been talking about it for so long that maybe the people around us are all, uh, tired of hearing it.
But I do think that Google Flights has gone mainstream, and for good reason. I mean, it is, it's just s- way smarter to book that way. And, you know, even if you know you wanna book a flight with a s- particular airline or on a particular day or a particular flight, starting at Google Flights gives you the full picture right away, and that's what I think makes it the most valuable.
And those price alerts. I can't wait to talk about price alerts. All right, today on the show we are giving you a grand tour of the world's best website, Google Flights. All that and more.
Hey, it's Dan and Terry.
We're here in Guanacaste, Costa Rica at the beautiful Andaz Resort. Welcome back to the Thrifty Traveler podcast.
Welcoming us back to the show this week were Dan and Terry from the Andaz in Costa Rica. They looked really happy and way too tan. It was probably the last day of their trip. Thank you guys so much for sending us a video. Um, all right, it's time for the Extra Mile, where we dig a little deeper on an important travel topic, and it's inspired, as always, by our awesome Extra Mile newsletter that hits your inboxes every weekday morning giving you the latest travel news, some fun deep dives, a, uh, new section that I'm doing called Gettin' Booksy where we celebrate some of the best bookings that our readers make.
That's been really fun. And of course, my, my beloved On Our Radar section, which is just me dumping out my notebook every week, all the musings and thoughts that I have about the world of, uh, new routes and airline strategy. Sign up for that newsletter today, thriftytraveler.com/extra mile. Uh, this week on the Extra Mile we're diving into all things Google Flights, and I wanna start really simple, Kyle.
How do you access Google Flights?
Me personally? Yeah. Can I tell you something ve- really strange? Yeah. I go to, I literally enter in my browser tab google.com/flights. Really? Every single time. Or flights.google.com, either way. Would a normal person who uses this website every single day, if not multiple times a day, just have it saved on their, you know, browser tab?
Yeah. I just haven't done that.
That's really funny. I actually have, uh, a collection of 10 different saved searches that automatically pop up, explore map searches. So I use it straight off of my, uh, bookmarks bar on my, my, uh, browser there. That's sicko stuff. Um, we me- we mention this because Google Flights is best used, uh, on a browser on a computer or a tablet, right?
So you can get all the full features and functionality. It's not really a mobile
app. The word you were looking for is desktop.
Desktop.
Desktop, yeah.
Um, I, I would just recommend that i- if you do use Google Flights on your phone, that's fine. You can use it to see fares, but you're really not gonna get all the functionality you need unless you're looking at a wide screen, right?
I use it in a pinch if, you know, I need to answer somebody's question about a f- the price of a flight from point A to point B. But also, to me, and this is a true millennial thing, booking flights is a desktop activity. So if I'm searching for fares and I need a couple of Google Flights tabs open, which I generally do when I start searching for flights, you need to do that on a desktop.
You just get so many more features. It's so much more powerful. It's so much more easier to use by using a laptop.
Okay. What is Google Flights, and I guess more importantly, what is it not?
Google Flights is not an online travel agency. You're not actually booking through Google Flights as you do using a site like Expedia or, um, Orbitz or enter your favorite, you know, search engine here.
It just functions much differently. It is a search platform. It is technically a meta search engine, which is basically, it's just a cl- the search engine of search engines where, you know, there are hundreds of different websites, including the likes of Expedia, that, where you can search for fares, and Google pulls in all of them.
But I would say most importantly, the prices that you see looking through Google Flights from your very first search, 999 times out of 100, are gonna be booking direct with the airline, which is what we always urge people to do and caution people against booking through an online travel agency. And because that is so important, that is a big piece of the reason why Google Flights is just so, so powerful.
Yeah, it's, it's why we use it so much w- in our Thrifty Traveler Premium Flight Deal alerts too. We send people the Google Flights link so they can get exactly what fare they want, and then they can go book directly with the airline instead of messing around with a middleman. That is absolutely the best way to do it.
Um, we're gonna just glow about Google Flights for the rest of this podcast, but a few limitations. Um, who, what airlines are not featured on Google Flights? It does not take into account every single carrier in the world, right?
It's pretty darn close though at this point. Yeah. For years, the biggest knock a- against Google Flights was that Southwest didn't show up.
And you know what, has it been two years now that Southwest has been listed on Google Flights? So now the list is really short. I mean, the biggest ones that aren't there, uh, Air China sometimes, China Eastern sometimes Thai Airways in Thailand occasionally, but increasingly I'm seeing it there. And then really kind of small regional airlines in especially further flung places across the globe, like, um, you know, in big chunks of Africa as well as some in Southeast Asia.
But it really is few and far between. If you're looking to book, uh, a domestic flight or a major international flight, it's gonna be there.
Yeah. Um, a few other limitations to note. Sometimes airlines information on Google Flights is a little slow to update. We've seen this most notoriously with Singapore.
Sometimes they have some issues, whatever their plat- their website communicating with Google Flights sometimes just takes a little time. The fares are almost always there, but it's, you know, sometimes it, there's just a lag from when things update. And Icelandair, especially their Saga premium, their kind of business class light fares or whatever, those sometimes have a, a hard time reflecting correctly in Google Flights.
But other than that, you know, we searched for this stuff every day, and it is remarkably accurate.
It is very occasionally a problem where you will see cached prices, where you'll start searching, you'll see a flight from Chicago to Denver for $149 round trip, and you click through the departing fare and then the returning fare, and then all of a sudden Google says, "Oh, this, the price of this flight went up to 178, $179."
It is pretty few and far between where issues like that happen. Again, every point here of what the downsides of Google Flights are are drastically outweighed by just how powerful and quick it is, and easy to use as well.
Let's talk about how to use it. Um, if you're listening to this episode, I recommend you check this episode out on YouTube.
It's gonna have some video tutorials on there. We'll show you how to use a lot of these features as well. But let's start with the filters, Kyle. Those, those filters you love so much, the filters that make this platform so, so good. Uh, and we'll start-- You'll see them on the top bar when you go onto Google Flights.
Any sort of search, once you start your search, you'll see all these, and it usually starts with stops. So you can filter for nonstop flights, one-stop flights, or two-stop flights or, and any number of stops if you're really dying for that three or four-stop itinerary. I know people love those. Um, so that's kind of the easiest first one to start with.
Uh, the airlines filter is also extremely powerful. Um, every airline that appears on any search between two cities will be in that checklist, and you can filter them out, um, or filter for as many airlines as you want. So you can say, "You know what? I just wanna see Aer Lingus fares over to Europe." You can just filter for Aer Lingus.
You can also filter out Aer Lingus if you don't wanna fly Aer Lingus, or you can filter for Oneworld alliance flights, so you can see Aer Lingus and their partners, um, flying that way too. So you have all three of those options to filter for airlines. Do you use these?
Oh, uh, all the time. And you know, I would caution people against going too ham with it because by only searching for SkyTeam fares because you're loyal to Delta or only for Delta for that reason, you may miss out on some great options.
Do-- I do this every single time, especially for domestic fares. I-- If the people at Google are listening, I have one small, very niche, selfish request, which is I would love the ability to filter for specifically operating airlines. So what will happen occasionally is, you know, you might be searching from Minneapolis to Amsterdam, and you search for Delta because you want to fly Delta on that route KLM also operates that route, but because they code share, KLM will actually show up for those routes even if you didn't select a filter for KLM.
Very niche. It would be helpful. It is not enough to give this a knock. These filters are incredibly powerful.
Yeah, you also have a bags filter where you can add a carry-on bag or a checked bag, which will include that in your total price, or it'll at least tell you which fares include a carry-on bag or, or a checked bag as well.
And then finally, there's the connecting airports, uh, filter, which I use all the time. Um, you can choose what airports you want to connect in or you are okay connecting in. It'll filter out, uh, itineraries that don't include those. Uh, most importantly, though, I don't, I don't really do the airports as much as I do the maximum connecting time.
I usually keep a, you know, maximum of four hours connecting if I'm booking, you know, a, a shorter, you know, domestic round trip. If I'm taking a stop, um, I increase that up to, like, six hours as a maximum connection time. You can also set minimum connection times. Uh, if you're worried, you know, American Airlines will try and sell you a 25-minute connection at Phoenix every once in a while when they first load their fares.
If you're not comfortable with a 25-minute connection, you can bump that up to 45 minutes or whatever. But using that filter as well, um, is really good. And then of course, there's the price filters. You can filter by the time of day of your flight, the duration of your flight. You can even filter for things like, uh, carbon emissions.
So, um, these are all helpful, but I think the biggest ones are filtering for stops, filtering for airlines, filtering for bags, and connecting airports.
I would add another one to that. I would say maybe the filter I use the most other than stops is time And I use it this way. If I know that I need to depart sometime in the morning, uh, you can change your departure time and say, you know, I need, this needs to depart sometime between the hours of 6:00 and 8:00 AM because we tell people the first flight of the day is the best rule you can make.
So I use that a lot. Maybe more importantly, if I am booking a positioning flight, so I'm flying from Seattle to Hong Kong, I need to book a flight separately from Minneapolis to Seattle, and, you know, that flight from Seattle to Hong Kong departs at 3:00 PM, I know I want to get to Seattle probably four hours in advance just to give myself a buffer, if not a little bit longer, which means I can set the filter for arrival times to, say, 11:00 AM to make sure that I arrive in Seattle sometime before that window stops.
These are really helpful. We'll get to Google Flights price alerts, I promise. That's gonna be my favorite section. But when you set those filters, you can then set a price alert using those filters. So if you, you know, if you need to book a positioning flight like you just said, then you're getting alerts for just what fits your perfect itinerary, which is really nice as well.
Uh, the newest filter that Google Flights has is this basic economy filter. Um, at the top next to the kinda one-way or round trip, uh, and the number of passengers right next to the fare, uh, on flights only within the US and Canada right now, there's a dropdown that says, "Economy include basic and economy exclude basic."
That way you can filter out those kinda pesky basic economy fares that don't come with seat assignment or much of anything else. Um, have you been using this?
Yeah, almost every time. Yeah. Because, you know, I want to book f- w- with few exceptions, I want to book at least a main cabin fare. I need to be able to set that Google Flights price alert and then rebook if prices drop.
That is not gonna be an option if I'm booking a basic ticket, so I exclude those. If I'm using this to research award ticket options, I wanna see the main cabin rate using, you know, cash as well. So n- again, nine ti- nine-plus times out of 10 I'm using exclude basic in this, which is really helpful. I do wish that Google Flights would find a way to expand this beyond just flights operating within the United States and Canada, definitely to, you know, like Mexico and the Caribbean, but increasingly abroad.
I think it would be really helpful. I'm not quite sure why they haven't sorted this out yet. I'm guessing it has something to do with the fact that airlines in, over in Europe call or, you know, n- label these fares something different than we do here in the United States. So I'm hoping it's a matter of time before this expands over to Europe.
Yeah, definitely. Um, one more filter to point out, too. Uh, you can filter for the ranking of your results. So when you pull a search, if you're searching, you know, Chicago to Denver flights, what it'll do, Google Flights likes to put out something at the top called top flights, which they think are at the best times of day for maybe the best price.
Whatever their algorithm says, you know, these are some of the best options for you. You can, on the right side, right over where the airfares are themselves, you can click something that will usually say sorted by top flights, and instead you can change that to sort by price, departure time, arrival time, duration, or even emissions, too.
So that's kinda one way to, to filter out your, the kinda end result there so you're not just getting what Google Flights says is the best flight, so you can actually just pick for yourself and use some of those filters. Um, I think one of the best things about Google Flights that, that we always preach and tell people to try and use is the fact that you can search for multiple departure and destination airports, up to seven at a time.
Um- Seven of
each. Seven of each.
Seven
departure, seven destination airports. That's a lot of reach.
Why would you wanna do this?
Because, I mean, m- flexibility is everything, right? And if you're flexible, not just where you're flying into, but, you know, if you're planning abroad and you're willing to book that kind of positioning flight to get over to Hong Kong or to get over to London, the more airports you can pack into the search, the cheaper fares you're gonna find.
So starting here in the United States, if you know, you know, you live in a smaller regional airport, you know your best bet is to depart for Europe from somewhere on the East Coast. You can add Boston and New York and Newark and Dulles, m- maybe Atlanta and Miami. Throw Chicago in there as well. But then you're also like, "Well, you know, I really want to get to Paris, but I would be willing if, if it saves me a lot to fly into Amsterdam or Madrid or Barcelona or Vienna or Zurich," all of these places where you can train in a relatively short distance or hop on, you know, like a $19 Ryanair fare.
The more airports you pack into that search, the cheaper fares you're ultimately gonna find. And then it's up to you to decide whether you want to take those kinds of connections and build your own adventure to get there, but Google Flights makes it so easy to unearth these kinds of savings by having, allowing you to search from so many departure and destination airports.
Yeah, up to seven of them in each of those boxes. It's another really good way to cast a really wide net and find the lowest fares. Okay, let's talk about the calendar view. Um, this is, like you said, maybe the most important feature of Google Flights. It's what makes it so valuable to us and other people who love to book cheap travel.
So how do you find it, uh, the calendar fare? What, like, what are you looking for?
So what I do is I search for, you know, my ideal departure date. So for example, I'm trying to get to Boston in December. I want to fly in on Saturday, December 12th. So I search for either a one-way or a round-trip flight departing on the 12th.
But then you click on that date where you select it, and it pops up this calendar where you see the months of both December and January. It shows the lowest price based upon what you've already filtered for on that calendar, and the cheapest dates are in green. So I have this open right now as we're searching, and I see, you know, probably about half the dates in the months of December and January $160 in green.
But that also means that, you know, if I were to instead depart a week later On December 19th, it shows me $270. So $110 more by changing by a week. That kind of savings in reverse where you depart on the 12th instead of the 19th, to be able to see in green that it's $160, more than $100 less, is just absolutely invaluable.
Yeah. A- and you can scroll through the entire calendar, uh, when you do a search, so you can go all the way to the end of the booking calendar and see what fares will be kinda all year long. You do this enough and you realize why we sit here and harp on people, telling people, "Book on Tuesday and Wednesday and Saturday.
You know, book flights for those days because they're always the cheapest." You can always see it in, in, highlighted in green some of the best fares. And just by changing your flights by one day here or there, you can save so much money. And, and you can do this when you have round trip searches as well, and you can adjust the length of your trip, uh, in that calendar.
I mean, I spend most of my time on Google Flights just playing around with the calendar, figuring out what combination of dates will get me the lowest price or, you know, if I really need to go on Friday, maybe what's the return date that's gonna get me the lowest price on my round trip? So it's that flexibility working in the calendar that'll really, really save you money and, and the calendar tool is Google Flights to me.
Absolutely. I mean, we have harped on what we coined the flight first rule. Before you do anything, before you request time off work, before you book a rental car or, or a hotel, whatever, start by searching for flights, and this is why. Because Google Flights with this calendar makes it so, so easy. They actually make it even better where if you search for, you know, in my case, I need to fly f- uh, to Boston on December 12th or earlier, and I probably need to come back on the 14th or the 15th If it fun- if it turns out that after searching for the 12th to the 15th that by returning on the 14th it's $100 cheaper, Google Flights is gonna have a little pop-up alert that actually tells me that.
Or after I search for the 12th to the 14th, you can then pop up a date grid which you see underneath some of the initial s- uh, searches, which kinda gives you this matrix of showing you exactly what it's gonna cost by shifting your, um, you know, your departing flight, your returning flight, or both by a day or two or more to really help you zero in on the absolute cheapest days to travel, again, where every price you see is factoring in the filters that you've already set.
So it's not like Google Flights is gonna recommend a two-stop Frontier flight when I've filtered for nonstop on Delta. It's just not gonna do that.
Yeah. Um, w- we obviously can gush about this all day. The Google Flights calendar is the absolute best. You just find it by clicking on the date on your, uh, your search bar.
So it's very, very easy to do there. Um, last thing that you can kinda look through in your search results, uh, the amenities you get on board, uh, some information about the legroom. Once you click into the fare exactly, you hit the drop-down arrow, um, you can see what Google Flights will estimate as the legroom in your seat, you know, whether that's a 29-inch Frontier flight legroom or 33 inches with a Japan Airlines, uh, economy row.
Um, it'll also tell you if you have Wi-Fi on board or if you should have Wi-Fi on board. I guess that's not a guarantee anywhere. Um, if you're gonna have an outlet and what kind, um, and if you'll have, you know, things like live TV, and it'll even give you an emissions estimate there as well. Um, so all that information is really helpful.
You can also download a free browser extension that I use all the time called Legrooms+. Um, it deplay, it displays some of that stuff just right there on the main search results page. So you don't have to click through to find all that information. It'll display things right there. Um, and I think Legrooms+, it's free and it's, it's a pretty good tool as well.
Yeah, the one, one word of warning about Legrooms+ is at some point over the last couple of years they have started incorporating this option to also see results from, like, Expedia and Kayak and other sites, which May or may not be helpful. It's clear to me that what they're trying to do is trying to push you to some of those sites to book where they may get a commission when you actually book.
You don't need to display any of that. You can just only see the flights through Google, which are almost always, like we said, booking direct with the airline and just skip all that. It's just something to watch for.
Yeah. Okay, do we think this is a good kinda Google Flights 101? Is, has everybody graduated here?
Diplomas for everyone?
Diplomas for everybody.
Okay, yeah. I mean-
Where's your ... That's not a graduation hat.
No, it's not my graduation hat. This is, uh, I guess my, my Thrifty Traveler graduation from Google Flights 101. Ready for 201. Con- congrats,
you made it.
Um, yeah. I mean, seriously, if you can master those filters and use the calendar view like a pro, I mean, that puts you in the top 1% of Google Flights users, and that's really
I mean, those are some of the most important things. But there are more, kinda more advanced features that really can make you an expert in booking cheap travel, and we're gonna talk about all those right after this. Okay, we're back, and we're talking now about some of these more advanced features, and we're gonna start with Google Flights Explore.
This is, like you mentioned in the open, the one that blows people's minds the most. I think I was on TV in Chicago one time, and an anchor, I had a-
Big shots.
Yeah, big shots.
Wow, name drop.
I had hi- the anchor pull up Google Flights Explore 'cause he was asking me about, like, spring break flights or something, and he was poking around on Explore, almost booked himself a flight to Orlando while we were on live TV.
It was pretty great. But he was, his mind was blown. I mean, this is the coolest feature and, and really it's for anybody to use. If you're inflexible and you have specific dates where you can travel, this is the best way to find a deal on a trip that actually works for you. If you are super flexible, this is the best way to find the absolute lowest fare, then you can just go wherever the lowest fare takes you.
I mean, it is, it is truly the best, uh, feature of this whole thing.
For as much as Google Flights has gone mainstream, it does still feel like this is a not so well-known secret that people just don't understand it's here, and it's really hiding in plain sight. It's not something that Google itself talks a lot about.
We certainly talk about it a lot. But if you're, if you're doing any search for Google Flights, whether you're searching abroad, domestically, whatever, you'll see at the top, uh, menu bar the option to just click Explore. You can also find it through kinda Google's homepage. You can go to flights.google.com/explore, which again, as a demented person, is something that I often do.
But it is- Probably the single most powerful feature in this entire thing for any of those situations, whether you know you wanna fly f- to Europe sometime, um, you know, in au- on August 17th departing, but you don't really care where you fly to or you just wanna see what deals are there, Google Flights Explorer is perfect for this.
If you just need that getaway and you don't care where it is as long as it's cheap, Google Flights Explorer is an absolute goldmine that can help you find the best deals, period.
Okay. So le- let me show you exactly how to use it here. So from the main Google Flights screen, what's the URL again, Kyle?
Uh, Google...
You're putting me on the spot now. google.com/flights. How's that? google.com/flights. Um,
from that main screen, you put in all the information that you want. So you put in your departure city, you can put in your departure cities if you have multiple, up to seven like we said. Um, you put in your dates, and then you just leave the destination box blank and you press Search.
That's how you get to the Google Flights Explore map. The other way to do it, which is really the pro way, the expert way, is to set up a full search, search any two random cities, say, uh, Minneapolis to Chicago, where you know a bunch of flights are gonna pull up. Set up a full search like that, apply all the filters that you know you want, and then at the end, take out your destination city and put in something, anything geographically vague.
So you can just write anywhere and it'll pull up Explore. You could also write something like United States or Caribbean or Europe or even the name of a state, like anything vague, and it'll pull up an Explore map for that. So then once you have the map up, you kinda move throughout the map, uh, and it'll showcase all the cheapest fares to all of the cities that you see.
Um, it's pretty amazing once you start understanding what it's doing for you, and you can start to see just how drastically different a, a flight to Missoula, Montana might be from a flight to Glacier Park Airport in Kalispell, and you can just see like the stark differences in fares to all of these places.
And then finally, you can choose flexible dates, which is a, a really powerful way to do this too. Um, you can pick- Weekend, one week, or two week trips. Uh, and then you can also filter what month you wanna fly in. So if you're- if you have some flexibility, you can say, "I wanna fly in just August," or just September or just October, or you can choose something that says any of the next six months, and it's gonna give you the absolute lowest price for the next half of a year.
Um, one of the only knocks against Google Flights is that you can't filter for particular airlines. You can only do it by the alliances, right?
No. Uh, this is important because if you just go straight to Google Flights Explore, you can only filter for SkyTeam or Star Alliance or Oneworld. You can't filter for just Delta flights or for just American flights.
But if you use that, as you called it, expert method for getting here by starting a search from Minneapolis to Chicago, and you set that filter first for, to only see Delta or only see American, and then change your destination to the United States or Europe or the Caribbean, that filter for that specific airline is going to carry over to the Explore map once that pulls up.
So I use this all the time if I'm in that kind of a situation where I just wanna get somewhere, I wanna scope out flight prices, but I wanna make sure it's on, you know, for us here in Minneapolis, a Delta non-stop flight. Very powerful.
Okay. Besides Explore, let's get into some of these other tools. Um, the cheapest time to book data, these little AI summaries at the top of the results page that tell you when the cheapest time to book typically is.
These are, are relatively new over the past few years. Um, they've gotten really good. So it might tell you that the best price on your ticket might be booked one to three months in advance. And it, and essentially, that little pop-up is saying, like, "Maybe it pays to wait if you're gonna search this one random route."
Sometimes it'll say, you know, "It's the best time to book right now, you're not gonna get a better price than this," things like that. Um, these don't always pop up on every single search, but you'll find them on a lot of searches right now with Google Flights.
Yeah, it's really helpful. The one thing that I do is I, I can be a little bit skeptical of some of those alerts because it's just based on past data, and that is about as good a data as you can get, but we know that flight prices are unpredictable.
So what I will do is I will instead, you know, if, let's say I'm trying to book a flight from Minneapolis to Boston, the example I've continually used, and we're getting into the window where, you know, it's time to put up or shut up. You know, it's the last four or five weeks. I know that prices are probably more likely to go up than down.
What I will do is I will open up the price calendar and kinda scroll back into the final, the next couple of weeks, just two weeks out. And if it, if it's very clear that prices go up two to three weeks out, that the green doesn't only start for, you know, three weeks in advance, then I know, okay, well, I should probably be booking this flight within the next couple of weeks because if I wait until just three weeks out On this specific route at this specific time as I'm looking, prices are going to go up once you get within that kinda 21-day window.
Yeah. This is really good information to have too if, especially if they hit you with one of those summaries while you're already searching. But, um, another really good way. And then, uh, underneath every fare, underneath the top flights section of your search results, you'll see a little blue highlighted box that says, "Prices are currently low," "Prices are currently typical," or, "Prices are currently high."
It'll give you a little drop-down arrow that says View Price History. What this does is it shows you, um, what the price of the search you've been doing over the last 60 days has been doing. So you'll see a, an actual graph of when the price dipped, when it went up, so then you can see, you know, when prices fell, see what that rate was, and be like, "Huh, okay, maybe that's what I should be looking for," you know, that lower rate.
Um, and it'll give you kind of an estimated typical fare. Uh, this doesn't appear on every single fare. I believe this only works, I, I actually don't know this, but I believe this only works when someone out there in Google Flights land is tracking that fare with a price alert, but it's really valuable information.
Um, and you know, set all your price alerts. You get 100 of 'em, so you're doing the world a service.
What, what do you think Google Flights land looks like?
Google Flights land is, is just beautiful. It's
heaven. It's, it's heaven. Yeah. It is heaven. It's where we wanna be.
Um, but yeah, these, these, uh, you know, the data that it gives you around if you're getting a good deal or not on your fare is also really valuable.
If you don't have that kind of built-in, uh, that built-in mental compass like we do for airfare, i- if you just have no idea or you're just, you're searching for a fare, uh, um, internationally between two countries you're not often searching for flights between, it's like, "Man, is this a good deal? Is this not a good deal?"
It just gives you some context right away, and it's just really helpful for that as well. Um, are you ready to get into price alerts?
I will just say one last thing before I let you off the leash on price alerts. You've been waiting your entire life for this moment, I think. So just be patient for one second.
These price graphs of whether something's a good deal are incredibly valuable. One thing Google has started doing is making predictions about this, especially as you get into the last kinda couple of weeks before departure. So I'm looking right now at this fare, and it says, "This price is unlikely to drop and will likely go up tomorrow by at least $95."
I would take that with a grain of salt. I wouldn't look at that as gospel that, oh, you know, this $449 fare is gonna be whatever 449 plus $95 is tomorrow if I don't book. But I would use that as, you know, maybe the kick up the butt that you need to get something booked if it's something you absolutely need.
Yeah. Any information is helpful. You know, always take it with a grain of salt. It might not do exactly what Google predicts. The airlines are their own entities, obviously. But those insights, I mean, that's a ton of data they're going through, so they're creating those insights not out of thin air. Um, okay.
Google Flights price alerts. On any search result page or on any fare or on both, you can set up an alert which will send you an email when the price of a flight goes up or down, so long as you have a Gmail account connected to your Google Flights. Um, how you set them, there's a section on search results below the price history graphs that just says Track prices.
Uh, you can track the dates you have picked for your search or any dates on your route. Um, and then on individual fares, on the top right-hand side near the total price, uh, you can also click to set up an alert that on that exact individual fare, whether it's a round trip, a multi-city, a one-way, you can search that and be alerted when prices go up or down.
Um, you can set almost as many as you want. You can set up to 100 Google Flights price alerts, which I have maxed out several times, and I try to keep as close to 100 as I possibly can. Um- I, I set up lots of price alerts around my trip, alternate days, alternate times, alternate flights, maybe the flight that I actually wanna take and not the lowest price, and just see if the price goes down over time.
Um, and then you can use all of your usual filters too. All, every single one of these filters we've talked about, you can put those into your tracked price. So if you say, "I only wanna fly premium economy on August 17th from MSP to Amsterdam, and I wanna go nonstop," you can set up that exact alert. Or you can say, "You know what?
I'll fly anything. Give me the lowest price." You can set up that alert and everything in between. I love Google Flights price alerts.
It is. I think that the natural entry point or what really hooks people is the calendar, and then Google Flights Explorer. I think this is probably the most day-to-day useful because whether you're just trying to plan a trip, you haven't booked it yet, but you wanna know, like, "Hey, is that, you know, premium economy fare over to Europe, is that gonna come down a little bit so that it comes to a price when I can book?"
Great. Have that set up. If you're already booked and you wanna save more because you're booking not a basic economy fare or a basic ticket on one of these airlines, but something that can be canceled for free and rebooked, you set a Google Flights price alert for that trip you already have on the books, and then you get that email that, "Hey, this has come down by 200 bucks."
You go through it, you cancel your trip, you rebook it at that $200 cheaper rate, you pocket a voucher with whichever airline for this. I mean, the, the amount of airline credits that I have pocketed and used over the last six years since the pandemic really super powered the p- the power of Google Flights price alerts, it's probably More than $3,000?
Yeah.
That is-- It's incredible how useful this is.
Yeah, I, I use, I mean, of my 100 Google Flights price alerts, 80 of them are probably for flights I already have booked, and then 20 are for, like, prospective flights or something like that. I mean, adding a Google Flights price alert to something I booked is part of my post-booking flow of things that I do.
We forward the itinerary to TripIt, that might be one. Uh, put them into Flighty if they don't automatically upgrade, that might be two. And then my third thing is always to go set Google Flights price alerts. And I don't do it just on the day I want. I, like I said, I do it all around the fare that I've already booked.
So the exact one, maybe the next class up, so I can see if maybe an upgrade offer would be much cheaper in the app. I do, um, you know, flights on different days, flights at different times. My most desirable flight, maybe the one that I know is gonna get the cheapest, I just set tons of them. Um, and you can set, you know, round trip or one way, and you can adjust the days either way.
So I catch a lot of really low fares, and I'm able to kinda tinker with my itineraries over and over until I get the best price in the end.
To the point you made earlier about filters carrying over to these price alerts, that means you can really zero in on exactly the flight that you already have booked.
If you need to be on that 8:00 a.m. departure, a later departure isn't gonna work, you can filter it to that specific hour, where that's the only thing that's gonna show up in your price alerts. That's the only thing that's gonna s- show up in your search as well. So it is really, really powerful for tracking the flights you already have booked.
The one caveat to keep in mind there is especially if you're booking, let's just say, more than Four to six months in advance, the airlines might change their flights. They might change the schedule. So if you filter only for flights departing before 8:00 AM and they push that departure that you're already booked on to 8:05, that price alert is now broken.
So it's just something to keep in mind that you may need to go back and fix as, as you get closer to your trip.
Yep. Set your price alerts, people. They're free. You know? You're, you're doing yourself a disservice and you're doing the world a service when you set a price alert 'cause then everyone gets all that data that you're collecting.
You have to do it.
The, uh, I'm just here to help, you know?
Uh, all right, let's quickly talk about Google's new AI tool. Uh, it's called Explore Deals with AI. Um, basically it lets you just talk to Google Flights like a chatbot, uh, and then it pulls in other things like, uh, hotels and other travel info to help you plan a trip.
Uh, I've tinkered with this a little bit. Um, I think it can be useful, especially if you don't totally know what you want, um, out of a trip. You're just kinda looking for, you know, say I want something that's a weekend length trip that's kid-friendly and budget-friendly sometime in the month of November.
You can just kinda hit search, talk to it like a chatbot, and it'll spit out some answers for you. Uh, not always great answers. It is an AI prompt. It's just, it's doing the best it can with whatever it has, but, um, you know, I've, for instance, I, I looked, I, when I first tested it, it was, I was asking for a weekend ski trip and it told me to go to West Virginia.
Not gonna do that.
Great skiing
there.
They have some skiing there. Wouldn't call it great skiing there, but they do have some mountains. Uh, but, uh, you know, it's not perfect. Have you tried this?
I have. I think very important caveat for this. You and I are both sickos who have been using all of these features not just for months, but for many, many years, and so I'm just really comfortable with all of this.
To me, this AI deals format is basically just like if ChatGPT and Google Flights Explore got married, that, that this is the baby that they have. So it is very useful, I think, especially as an entry point or for somebody who just really prefers to get information that way, by u- using that kind of a chat interface.
For everybody else, I think Google Flights as a whole, especially Google Flights Explore, is just so incredibly intuitive. I think it's gonna give you everything that you need, but this option is here.
Yeah. Okay. Um, I think that's a good rundown of some of the advanced features. We have a listener who asked us about a couple more.
Are we ready to help a listener?
Let's help a listener.
Okay. Can we... I'm gonna do a quick update though, 'cause we need to check in with our guy Mark, who, uh, sent us an email checking in from our beloved Taco Bell Cantina at Denver Airport. He said, "Just listened to the latest podcast on my Colorado Springs to Denver flight today, then fast walked the length of Denver A Concourse just to report on Gunner's taco hero.
I inhaled the Chicken Cantina Burrito with Diablo sauce, of course, before my flight home to Tampa. Not sure if I just lived mas or lived dangerously. Probably the sort of place best appreciated after a tequila or two." Uh, Mark said, "It was the first time I was glad the wait for an airport lounge was too long, as this experience was more memorable."
He even put in some photos to prove it. But Mark went to the Taco Bell Cantina. Boots on the ground reporting for us.
Really important journalism. Groundbreaking stuff. Thank you, Mark. I'm very jealous. Uh, not sure how I feel about that particular Taco Bell order. Mine would've looked a bit different. What would, what would yours be, first time, Taco Bell Cantina, Denver Airport?
Go.
Oh, man. I'd have to get one of the, uh, the Baja Blast, uh, boozy slushies for sure.
Yep.
And then-
For science-
Yeah ...
and journalism.
And a Crunchwrap and a, and a couple of Doritos Locos I think would probably put me in a good place for that flight.
Okay. If- Yeah, yeah. Okay, I like that one. I would maybe just go one Crunchwrap.
Don't wanna overdo it just in case, you know, things take a turn
The Crunchwraps are for the concourse and then the Locos are for the flight. Pocket those for later. Uh
tacos. A truly loco move, uh, to bring out Doritos Locos on your flight to Tampa. Um, all right, let's ask a more serious listener than Mark.
We'll ask, uh, we'll get, we'll hear from Scott here. Um, Scott asks us, "How about using PointsPath Google Chrome extension to monitor the cash and points price of your flight and rebook when the price goes down using PointsPath alerts?" Um, he says he loves the show, he's looking forward to the live episode, which we've already taped, and his guilty confession is that he listens to us on 1.3x or 1.5x speed, which he says is entertaining.
Uh, do you listen to us on 1.3 or 1.5x?
I do not.
I do. I listen to everything on 1.5x, though .
That's sicko stuff.
It is. I just have too many podcasts to listen to and there's not enough hours in the day.
So much content out there.
Okay, so PointsPath and the seats.aero are both browser extensions, and what it does is it, it shows you exactly what that fare would be if you use points and miles for your flight instead.
So if you're seeing an American Airlines fare for, you know, $300 from Chicago to Phoenix, it's gonna show you right next to the fare, uh, what it's gonna cost you in American Airlines miles and what it'll cost you in Alaska miles if it's available to book using those programs, too. It'll just show up right there next to the actual cash fare as well.
So it's, it kind of very visually easy to see, and it will also give you recommendations as to whether it's a good deal or not. So PointsPath particularly will say, you know, "I'd book with cash on this one," or, you know, "You're getting the best price if you book using your miles instead."
Well, and, and it saves you the work of, you know, you're searching in one place on Google Flights for the price to fly to Phoenix on American Airlines.
And then you don't have to go over to americanairlines.com or alaskaair.com and search separately for that exact same flight on that same day. I mean, you're gonna have to do that if you ultimately book, but you can go into that knowing that that's gonna be a good deal and exactly what you're gonna see.
In my experience, all of the information that these present is completely up-to-date, like to the second, with the exception of the fact that for seats.aero, if you're a free user, it's pulling in cached data. So that may mean that there are some discrepancies, but I would expect that's probably pretty few and far between.
If you'd like us to answer your questions on the podcast or if you have any feedback, hit us up at podcast@thriftytraveler.com. We might feature your question on next week's show. And we close the show as always with On the Spot, and it's Kyle's turn to put me on the spot. What do you have?
So we have spent the last, you know, 40-some minutes proving that you are a full-blown acolyte of all things Google Flights, worshiping at the altar of all things Google Flights.
What was Gunnar like before that? What, how did you search for and book flights before you learned the error of your ways?
Before Google Flights, I, I honestly don't remember doing anything. I, I think when I was like, you know, when I was in college or when I was really young, I was looking at maybe Kayak, I thought was like the gold standard for a while.
Um, and you know, Google Flights didn't really come on and become as powerful as it is now until probably, you know, five to eight years ago. Um, and it's continues to get better. But yeah, before that, I was kinda lost in the jungle of OTAs or, you know, just going straight to, uh, airline websites, um, and just kinda trying things out, uh, and hoping to get the best fare instead of just seeing what is the most comprehensive search on the internet.
So I, uh, I don't even remember what it was like, Kyle. I, I don't even wanna think about those days.
That was a lifetime ago. How
much I- You're a
changed man ...
how much I overpaid buying frankenfares from Kayak just, yeah. Yeah. Not, not good. Not my best booking back then.
I used to use two online travel agencies that are also like meta search, so they pull in a lot of different OTAs, Skyscanner, but especially Momondo.
N- neither of those I think are nearly as powerful or, or as useful as they used to be, you know, probably 10 plus years ago. I, Google Flights every single time. That's the takeaway here for this episode.
I remember finding, we were looking through a fare on Thrifty Traveler Premium going, just vetting it just to make sure it was bookable and everything, and the lowest fare on this like crazy business class cash deal was from a website called YOLO Flights.
And I messaged our, my coworker John, our chief flight deal analyst, and was like, "Probably not gonna send this one if we're sending people to YOLO Flights, right?" And he's like, "Yeah, correct. We, we won't
be sending that deal."
You only book once with YOLO Flights as well, so only living once.
All right, thank you all so much for listening to this episode of the Thrifty Traveler podcast.
Rate us five stars on your platform of choice, and like and subscribe to the show on YouTube where you can see all the visuals from Google Flights in today's episode. Send this episode to someone you know who needs to learn how to use Google Flights Explorer to book their next trip. If you have feedback for us, send me a note at podcast@thriftytraveler.com.
We would love to hear from you there. Kyle, tell us about the team.
This episode was produced by your favorite host who just canceled his platinum premier YOLO Flights account, Gunnar Olsen. It was produced and edited by Sylvia Thomas and edited by Kyle Thomas. Our theme music is by Benjamin Tissot. See you next week.
See ya.