Tutorial: How to find Cheap Flights using Google Flights

Google Flights is one of the best tools for searching for flights today, allowing you to explore many possible flights, flight timings, airlines, regions, class of travel and more. While there are a few sites and tools that can do this, few are as simple as Google Flights. This tutorial will guide you on the ways you can maximise your flight searches.

Finding Flights 101

Start by searching for ‘Google Flights’ in your web browser or go to the following link: https://www.google.com/travel/flights.

You will initially need to input these details:

Roundtrip, multi-city or one-way
Number of passengers
Class of travel (economy, premium economy, business or first)
Origin and destination; and
Date of travel

In terms of origin and destination, you can put the cities you want to travel to and from or exact airports. If you just put a city, the results will display the cheapest prices from any airport in that city. For example, in cities like London or Paris there are multiple international airports. Therefore, if you just want the cheapest ticket and you don’t care which airport you fly from/to, just input London to Paris.

After you have input your flights details, Google Flights will display the best combinations which are usually based on price, convenience and time of travel for the selected dates (departing 5th March and returning 9th March).

Filters

With Google Flights, you can set a variety of different filters on your search. From this point on, you can set your preferred airline, alliance, stops, times of day to depart and arrive and many more.

Finding Cheaper Tickets

You will notice three tools which will help someone determine if there are cheaper flights: Date Grid, Price Graph and Price History.

Our example shows a search for tickets from London to Paris, departing on the 5th of March and returning on the 9th of March. Initially, Google Flights will suggest to you change dates to fly from the 6th to the 9th of March, you can find tickets for £62; over £20 cheaper than the dates we have originally selected.

If we click on the Date Grid, we can see a combination of dates and prices for each of those combinations. This allows us to explore different date combinations and see how the price ranges.

The price graph option will allow us to see how prices vary if we keep the trip duration exactly as it is.

Our initial search page tells us that the prices displayed for our chosen dates are high based on historical data. If we view the Price History, we can see what the prices have been like over the past 50 days in more detail.

Track Prices and Set Alerts

Another great feature is the ability to track prices and get an email alert when the price changes. You need to be signed into your Google account to be able to use this feature.

By sliding the track button to blue, you will be notified that from now on you will receive emails about price changes.

Booking our Ticket

Let us assume we want to fly on a Oneworld Airline, so we select this in the filter and we get the following options:

From here, we select a departing flight (8.55pm departure). As soon as you click the departure flight, return options will be presented and we select the best option for us. From here, we are then given direct links to where we can book the selected flight. The first option presented is booking with British Airways directly.

Here British Airways are offering us Basic Economy, Economy Plus or Club Business Plus. You can also see your luggage allowance, if refunds are possible and seat selection options. We simply select the option we want, click ‘Continue’ and we will be taken to the British Airways website to finalise the booking.

Google Flights will also provide us with other online options for booking this flight. While 3rd party online retailers are sometimes cheaper than booking through the airline, there are more risks associated with using them, particularly if something goes wrong or you need to change/cancel your booking.

Google Flights Explore Tool

One of the best features of Google Flights is the Explore tool. This tool is great for people who want to explore places to visit and don’t have something definite in mind. I also find this tool very useful for people who need to do a mileage run or status run and can explore possibilities within their chosen alliance.

The explore tool can be found at the bottom of the Google Flights homepage.

Simply click the map below and you will be taken to the Explore Tool’s page.

You can set whichever city you want. In this example, London is the departure city. We have also set the filters to business class and Oneworld airlines only – so you will see only business class tickets on Oneworld airlines. If we are looking at around Europe, due to the departure city being London, many flights are likely to be operated by British Airways.

What you will see is a map showing you all the different places you can travel to. You can scroll to ANY region in the world and you will see what the flights cost. If we scroll to the S/E Asia region, we will once again see business class flights on Oneworld airlines.

An important point to consider is that the Explore tool defaults to setting the dates for a week-long trip anytime in the next six months, however, this can be changed, as shown below.

Final Thoughts

Google Flights is one of the best and most powerful tools to help you find the flights you need. It is simple, intuitive and allows you to get really creative with your travel plans.

In our opinion, Google Flights is by far and away the best flight search tool out there. With a little bit of practice using it, we believe you will come to the same conclusion.