Even better flight tickets search

Now that Rio, New York, and Paris are behind me, I don't really have a new trip on the horizon, and that always makes me incredibly restless. I fill that restlessness with dreams of a new journey, and for this year, I have set my sights on two things. First, I want to have an enormous chill vacation on a paradise beach , and secondly, I want to celebrate Christmas and New Year's far away just like in previous years. The latter might be Australia, together with my friends from Rio. We are still in the most fun group chat together (“Dutchie and the Boys”), and the plan is forming to travel through Australia for a month with the four of us, celebrating New Year's in Sydney. But I am hopelessly digressing because I wanted to tell you about a new way of searching for flight tickets that always helps you find the best price.

Because our hope in troubled times, Google has Google Flights, and just like with everything from Google, this system is also the master when it comes to searching for tickets. Because where regular sites sometimes have sneaky deals with airlines and inflate ticket prices in other ways, Google Flights is much less so. Furthermore, there are quite handy tricks that ensure that even when you don't have concrete travel plans, playing on the site is already a party in itself.

It finds the best city for you

For my Australia trip, for example, it currently costs €1172 to fly to Sydney on the days I want, and €1633 for a flight to the slightly higher Port Macquarie, and €1454 to the slightly lower Melbourne. And you can see all of that at a glance because I just typed in “Australia” and then get a map with all possible flight destinations. For the summer plans, I entered “Asia” as a search term and see that it’s around 800 euros to Bangkok and around 1000 to Bali.

It surprises you

Suppose you have a budget, you know how long you want to go, but you have no idea where to, then Google has some nice suggestions. Just like with regular Google, you can choose “I’ll take a chance” and it spits out different destinations that fit within your budget.

It shows you which day is the cheapest to fly.

SkyScanner does that too, but with Google Flights you can look up to nine months in advance to see which dates are the cheapest to fly, and that can’t be done anywhere else.

It gives you tips

There is a sort of bar that shows how much money you save if you fly earlier, later, or from a different airport to your destination.

It keeps an eye on the price

Found a flight but not in a huge rush to book? Set a price alert and Google will email you when the price is dropping significantly.