As it has matured, I’ve found that Google Flights has become a better and more accurate flight booking and tracking tool. If you don’t use the price tracking feature on Google Flights, consider it an excellent tool for tracking price fluctuations to tickets to your preferred destination.
Tracking Pricing On Google Flights With Email Updates
I still will use the “old” ITA Matrix when searching for a specific combination of flights or booking codes (it remains a great tool that I will miss when it is finally sunset, which Google has warned for years now). But I do find myself increasingly using Google Flights as a starting point for flights. Google Flights not only tends to offer accurate pricing, but offers combinations that do not always show up on airline websites, online travel agencies, or even aggregator sites like Kayak.
These flights results often have “deep links” which will send you directly to the airline website with your search info pre-populated. You arrive on the “pay” screen and only have to enter your name, choose a seat, and then input credit card info. Easy.
I’ve saved a lot of money on airfare via Google Flights. I also love how you can put “anywhere” as the destination” or simply a continent, like “Europe” and quickly see the cheapest pricing.
Google Flights has offered flight tracking for years and is not the only site that has offers this tool, but I find this tool as well is very helpful. On my recent trip from Toronto to Bridgetown, I used this tool to track flights and appreciated the daily updates.
I had missed out on the cheapest ticket, but as you can see below I was notified when the price dropped (back) to an acceptable level and immediately booked. That saved me a lot of money too.
CONCLUSION
I realize that many of you know about tracking flights on Google Flights, but if you do not use this tool, consider doing so…especially if you have some flexility around your travel dates. Let Google do the work for you…it is nice not to have to manually search for the same flights each day!
I’ve found it very useful and it’s my first stop in travel planning. I have alerts built on several routes. Last year when I was in the process of doing some work and selling a condo in Florida, price alerts let me know when the Frontier/Spirit fares hit the low point and I’d book those days. Also I tend to keep the alerts going even after I’ve bought a ticket to let me know if the fare drops so I can go back and re-price. I just netted a $50-some odd voucher on UA doing this a few days ago.
The “Anywhere” feature has helped me plan some fun adventures and also find some alternate/cheaper ways back. Faced with an expensive full fare ticket on American a few weeks back, I found on Google Flights through doing an anywhere search from that city to anywhere, then from the cheapest points there to home, a connection I could build on Allegiant that saved me $400.
Many friends and coworkers ask for travel advice, as I’m sure is the case for anyone who is a regular reader of yours, and Google Flights is the starter tool I show them.
Does the tracking work for multiple origins/destinations? There is not much long haul service from my local airport, and J tickets starting from the UK are often pretty expensive, so I am prepared to position myself pretty much anywhere in Europe when travelling intercontinentally, was pretty gutted when ITA stopped supporting multi-country origin searches.
I use it all the time for leisure flights. Not only for prices but to see what options are even available from point A to point B. I then go the airline website and buy from there.
I found it useful, especially for flexible bookings when I’m looking for possible destinations and to track flight prices. Unfortunately, I cannot figure out a way to avoid BASIC economy for intl flights. Like for United, I can do one bag for domestic flights.
It is also somewhat useful to explore United Roots since they don’t publish a time table anymore