How to find cheap flights using Google Flights
How to find cheap flights using Google Flights
Our member email deals highlight the best flight deals at that moment in time along with an easy and quick way to find and book the deal. To find these deals we use a combination of Google Flights , Momondo, Kiwi.com, Skyscanner along with OTA’s and Airlines directly.
All the above platforms provide some pro’s and con’s if used on their own but if you do use them all in combination they work really well together to find the best details that moment. Our systems continuously read and work through all the data from these flight deal platforms finding real time fluctuations in the price and highlighting deals that would often be hidden from view, or simply not found at all.
We have created this handy guide to help you use Google Flights to start your journey and find the cheap flights that are available in the moment. So here is how to use google flights to find cheap flights.
Google Flights is great for…
- Finding the right dates at the lowest prices
- Looking broadly at deal patterns quickly
- Plenty of search filters to help hone your results
Google Flights is bad for…
- Highlighting error fares
- Broader searches where you need to book quickly
- Search filters are not easy to use
Skyscanner, Momondo & Kiwi vs Google Flights:
- Get the very cheapest flight as it includes OTA’s also
- Finding error fares is made easy
- Great graph and price tables to visually find deals
- Can look across periods for arrivals and departures with ease
So what is Google Flights?
Simply put Google Flights is an aggregator of flights. It searches and compares airlines to find routes and fares via its technology from all major global and regional airlines. It is an incredibly useful and handy tool to find cheap flights.
How you use Google Flights?
Google Flights is visited by our flight deal team regularly. Even though our custom built technology finds flight deals using millions of data points, visually Google Flights is always worth a check to see any trends or interesting rate changes. It is part of our daily routine to check Google Flights to get a feel for any trending routes and deals our system may not have spotted. Visually Google Flights has some great tools to start your search, the calendar function is great to pick out drops in rates vs average fares. There date search is also very easy to use vs other cheap flight aggregators on the market.
The pricing is from major airlines so tends to be reasonably accurate most of the time, but Google Flights does not really feature OTA’s who can often have slight reductions in than even the airlines direct rates for the same routes. Its because of this we use our flight deal custom built technology first and foremost, however Google Flights really is a great tool.
How to use Google Flights to identify the lowest flight rates:
- Use the calendar search tool
Go to Google Flights and select your departure date using the calendar tool which pops out when selected. We provide a link usually for each flight deal which will pre populate all this information. You can then see what the difference in price is, if you change your departure dates or airport selection. We show the best flight deal, but it makes it easy to see other dates that would provide similar savings.
After a few seconds you will see the best rates come in, we suggest always filtering the cheapest rate option, then you can decide if the amount of stops or convenience of the fare vs the incredibly low flight price will work for you and your plans.
image courtesy of Google Flights
The cheapest flights are always showing in green within the calendar so you can quickly ensure you don’t pay more than you need.
Note: The green prices are based on the parameters of the deal our system has found for you. So if you want to change the duration of your trip those rates may change. Our technology is designed in real time to find you the very best deal at the time, so it’s unlikely amending anything will reduce your rate.
If the amount of nights, times or dates are inconvenient you can use our suggestion as a starting point to ensure you can get close the optimum flight deal price for that trip. Scrolling using the arrows through months is a good way to spot quickly if there are different times you can get the same deal.
Once you have found the deal, or used our specific best priced deal, you can then click to progress to the booking page. You can then see the full trip and make sure it is perfect for you. This is where Skyscanner and Kiwi can help, as often at this point, Google Flights does not have OTA rates, which can sometimes be 5% less due to their margin cuts to be competitive. So we would suggest if you have 5 minutes to then jump on Skyscanner, Momondo or Kiwi at this point to do a final check for this itinerary.
image courtesy of Skyscanner
Note: Be aware that some of the well priced trips do have stop overs or long periods at an airport in the middle, however, it can for longer trips pay dividend as the saving for a minor inconvenience can get you to some amazing destinations for a fraction of the price. Patience in some respects can pay and if your trip is for a long amount of time this really does mean you can travel the world for less. Something very close our hearts. Just make sure you check the stops before you book and make sure you are happy with the time and length of the stop (some can be a very long time). We try and select deals that are direct or 1 stop reasonable time expected stops. Our flight deal team try to avoid 2 stops or more unless the deal is incredible.
Things like stops and airlines can be filtered out using Google Flights navigation so this will really help you find the right deal for you qithout wasting time.
1. We Recommend you use Google Flight Filters
If you don’t want an airline you are not comfortable with, or really don’t like stopping en route, you can use Google Flights filters to ensure you don’t waste time looking at pricing and results that are irrelevant to you.
Our club members benefit from our teams knowledge and our technology, which is designed to our members the absolute best deal for a route based on many factors, not just price, but we want you to spend less time on the flight, least stops, most convenient option for the routes we send out.
Google Flights will not do this for you and if you are not checking, you may end up with an journey that may take valuable time away from enjoying your destination or getting down to business.
2. Book your Route
Select the flight you want, making sure you are perfectly happy with it. Check the cancellation rules and details in full. You then move to a page which has the options and you can then simply select the flight and book.
At this point you will be sent to the operator of the flight and you then complete your booking in full. The sooner you move to this point, the rate will lock in, so by that you wont loose the deal. It rarely changes once you get to this second page in Google Flights.
What we would always suggest at this point and in similarly to why we provide links to Skyscanner, Kiwi and Momondo usually in member emails, recommend that you do look at those platforms as they usually do have a cheaper option. They also give our members deals and deal alerts that are not public knowledge, so this is where you can really maximise savings. They have a larger choice of OTA’s so you really can find the same deal with discounts based on the OTA’s trying to remain competitive.
3. Check the OTA’s on Skyscanner, Kiwi and Momondo before you book on Google Flights.
When on the booking page, open another browser, so the Google Flight Deal is still there and locked in. Then go and check on Skyscanner, Kiwi or Momondo. Put in the same dates and route and then you can check the OTA’s price. Why? These aggregators have a bigger reach and more OTA’s included in the search results. An OTA usually will have a cheaper rate (usually trade secret wise because they give up some profit in the margin to be the cheapest and win the booking). But booking direct with the airline does sometimes give you more protection and will include cancellation policies that are more favourable.
Your now ready for take off!
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Still have some questions? Feel free to drop us a message on
members@secretflightclub.com and we would love to help.
