Google has unveiled its new Flights Search offering, a product that combines ITA’s expertise with Google’s technology.

Published: 14 Sep 2011

Google has unveiled its new Flights Search offering, a product that combines ITA’s expertise with Google’s technology.

When users search for flight information on Google they will see a “Flights” link in the left-hand panel. This link leads to the new Flight Search feature, and is offered in addition to the flight schedules which have been available since May.

As per the information available, the new offering only offers flights for a limited number of US cities and shows results for round-trip economy-class flights only. Google, which closed its $700-million purchase of travel software company ITA in April after a nine-month investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, said it will add more cities and options later.

Flights are chosen primarily based on cost and total travel time, while covering a variety of departure times and airlines. Flights Search automatically sets the filters to focus on options which are reasonable in both price and duration, and users can always adjust the filters to show even more flights.

On a company’s blog, Kourosh Gharachorloo, Engineering Director, Google, said that post the entry of ITA into Google’s family, the effort of engineering teams has resulted in this first step in flight search. Highlights are as follows:

• Get super-fast results (the focus is on speed for results. Also letting users make quick changes to dates, destinations, and filters).

• Simplicity (A simple list of the most relevant flights. Flight Search focuses on showing “an easy-to-scan list to help users get to their destination quickly and inexpensively”).

• Figuring out when to travel (Quickly see which travel dates are least expensive by dragging the date selector forward or backward, or check out the bar chart to compare lots of dates at once).

• Destination options (Exploring possible destinations, letting users filter them by airline, flight time and price. For example, one can use the map and filters to see where one can go from San Francisco within three hours for less than $300).

“The selection of flight results is not influenced by any paid relationships. Airlines control how their flights are marketed, so as with other flight search providers, our booking links point to airline websites only,” said Gharachorloo.