I’m a hardcore traveler and Google Flights is my tool of choice for figuring out my weird, complex, ever-changing plans.
But I know that I’ve only scratched the surface of the power-tools that Google Flights offers. Lifehacker’s Google Flights tip roundup has a ton of stuff that I found very exciting. Interestingly, a bunch of this stuff is especially useful for infrequent travellers — for example, techniques for finding the cheapest flight if you don’t care when you fly, or for finding the cheapest regional journey if you don’t care where you go (e.g., “Let’s have a Caribbean vacation — where’s cheap?”).
The power-flyer stuff is more interesting to me, especially the hidden layover technique for finding the airlines’ secret, cheap cities through which you can transit to get much cheaper journeys. There’s a tool called Skiplagged that does this so well that the airlines launched a bogus (and ultimately unsuccessful) lawsuit against them to shut them down — but it’s nice to be able to do rudimentary versions of the Skiplagged search through Google while you’re considering all the other variables.
Let’s say you know where you want to go, but you don’t know when. Maybe you want to sip Mai Tai’s in Hawaii, but you can’t afford to spend $800+ on a ticket in high season. You could research the cheapest months to fly, on average. Those estimates are usually pretty accurate, but obviously, your actual results might vary when it comes time to actually booking your tickets.
Instead, plug in your destination from Google Flights, select “flexible dates,” and you can browse real, current prices by month. The “flexible dates” tab shows you a calendar view of fares, but the price graph will give you a more visual, general idea of prices. It’s also a little easier to navigate, because you can see a wider and more specific range at once.
The Best Tips for Finding Cheap Airfare With Google Flights
[Kristin Wong/Lifehacker]