Just saw that Google Flights was introduce: for searching and booking flights online.
It needs some more work (see below), but it is a great start for a couple of reasons as compared to any of the competition I have seen:
- A much more intuitive and clutter-free user interface
- A blazingly fast response (SFO – AMS: response in about a second, all others took at least 10 seconds)
Try the user experience for yourself. A few things I liked:
- In addition to selecting preferred airlines, you can select preferred Airline Alliances
(they share miles anyway). - Shows flight duration and allows you to sort on it
(ideal for business passengers) - Shows if you can have WiFi
(for geeks like me) - Uses hint-panes when you hoover the mouse over certain areas to fill in more detailed information
(like the airline that operates the flight, or the stops you make). - Shows a graph with fare-rate over time
(so you can pick days with lowest fare more easily; the sweet spot for SFO-AMS seems to be 2-5 day trips that include a saturday/sunday night).
Some things they need to work on:
- You can search from USA to destinations outside USA, but not vice versa
(for instance, it finds SFO – AMS, but you are not allowed to enter AMS – SFO). - You can enter IATA airport codes, but not ICAO ones (like EHAM)
- It is not included in the Google – Products list
(right now you can go from Flights to Web search, but not the other way around). - It always starts with a departure in SFO
(it would make sense if you can select your faviourite departure airport; I live about 10 minutes from AMS / EHAM). - It always starts with a departure date 16 days from now
(The last link is pun intended: it tests the Google search cache for refreshing pages that calculate information).
–jeroen
via: Flights from San Francisco – Google Search.
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