How to Find the Best Deals on Google Flights

Get to Your Dream Destination Without Breaking the Bank

Oct 06, 2023

We believe that there are two types of people in this world. Those who love looking for flight ticket deals, and those who hate it with a passion.

In our relationship, both types are represented. Mike loves looking for the best deal and can spend hours researching and comparing options. And Hannah just wants to get from A to B as quickly and as hassle-free as possible.

In this week's edition of Mapping Memories, Mike will spill the beans on the tools and strategies he employs to secure the best flight deals.

This blog is part of our series covering tips and tricks for scoring the best flight deals. Want to read more? Click here for more Google Flights-related tips!

When it comes to finding the best deals online, I've got one go-to website: Google Flights. I’ve tried many other ones, but in my opinion, Google Flights reign supreme in the space of airfare websites. My backup is Kiwi, which sometimes dishes out even cheaper fares than Google Flights. However, be ready for a trade-off; these budget-friendly flights often mean longer layovers and more indirect routes.

After looking for the best deals online for the past years, I’ve come up with three golden strategies for finding those sweet flight deals.

🗓️ 1. Be Flexible With Your Dates

Let's illustrate our first strategy, and in my opinion, the most important one. Suppose you're planning a two-week getaway to Seoul in November, flying out from Amsterdam, and you want to keep your travel time under 24 hours.

The results hover around 850 euros, which seems pretty average for this period and includes flights with some of Europe's finest airlines. Not bad, right?

Well, hold on, because Google Flights has a trick up its sleeve. It can prompt you with this pop-up to alert for better deals:

By just adding one day to our travel dates, we get far better results:

Now suddenly, our Lufthansa flight is 250 euros cheaper! For just staying one day longer in mesmerizing South Korea? I know what I would do 👀

With the ‘Date Grid’, you can see the prices for your selected departure & arrival dates, but also the 3 days before, and the 3 days after.

In our example, it’s pretty clear that there are cheaper dates available for our (unfortunately hypothetical) 2-week trip to South Korea in November. I can now try to move around with the dates in an attempt to find the best combination.

We can even view the possibilities months ahead using the 'Price Graph' feature, while also changing the amount of days you want to spend on your destination!

We scored a good deal during Cherry Blossom season earlier this year, and it was our favorite trip to South Korea yet. It seems flights are pretty affordable around that time next year, so we recommend keeping an eye out for them if you’re interested in viewing those pretty pink petals!

Also, if you look to the top left of the picture, you can adjust the duration of your journey. This means, that you can virtually see every possible fare in the future. Be flexible with your dates and happy searching!

✈️ 2. Be Flexible With The Airline

Some people have high loyalty to a select number of airlines because they had positive experiences with them, or they have a (high) loyalty status with an alliance, such as SkyTeam, Oneworld, or Star Alliance.

Take for example my upcoming trip to Oman. Since KLM is the main carrier in the Netherlands, and they are a part of SkyTeam, it would make sense to prioritize flying with KLM or SkyTeam members to keep building your loyalty status with KLM and enjoy the benefits of your status, if you already have one. (In my case, this resulted us in getting an upgrade to Business Class on our trip back from Seoul, which we’ll tell you more about very soon 🤫).

But let's say we're dead set on sticking with SkyTeam airlines for our Oman trip, we get the following results: a 2-stop journey through Paris and Abu Dhabi.

However, when we look for other options, and we select all airlines, we get the following result:

That's more like it! Forget loyalty status; you save nearly 50% on your airfare and get one less stop.

🌆 3. Be Flexible with the Departing and Arriving City

Our third and final rule is to be flexible with your departing and/or arriving airport. For example, let's say we want to escape the Dutch winter and enjoy the Portuguese sun a bit. We decide to explore Faro for a week, somewhere at the end of November.

After using the ‘Price Graph’ feature we illustrated earlier, we found the best tickets for our 7-day journey:

Flying a direct flight with Transavia for only 120 euros. Quite a steal, if I say so myself. *Pats himself on the shoulder*.

However, what happens if we are flexible with our departure airport, say... Eindhoven?

We are able to find an even better deal! We save a whopping 33% on our flight ticket. Now, using this rule comes with one important caveat. If we live closer to Amsterdam, we do have to account for increased travel time, and possible travel costs to Eindhoven, so depending on your geographical location, this might cost you more. But you get the idea now, right?

Now, I can hear you think: this probably only works with low-cost carriers for short flights, right?

Well, no.

Let's say we want to enjoy some cocktails on the beach in Cancún, Mexico. Applying our previous rules, we found ourselves the best deal by being flexible with our dates, and flexible with our airlines:

Around 750 euros this time. However, if we look beyond country borders, and for example select “Brussels” as our departing airport

*drum roll please*

605 euros! We saved almost 20% on our flight tickets by just thinking outside of the box and selecting a different airport to depart from! Of course, living in Amsterdam means a longer journey to and from Brussels, but if you're counting your pennies, that 150-euro discount is pretty tempting.

So, have I convinced you that the strategies are the ticket to flight-finding success? 😉

So, what have learned?

Perhaps you’ve noticed that all three of the mentioned tips have one thing in common: flexibility. You’ll be able to find better flight rates when your travel plans aren’t set in stone yet. You’ll save a good amount of money and you’ll get to tell your friends and family about the amazing deal you’ve found. Just use Google Flights’ handy features to your advantage.

This is just the beginning of our blog series on finding the best deals for your holidays, so we’re hoping this one will help you in the future and gets you excited for more articles like this!

Do you have any secret methods to secure good flight deals? Or are you struggling with finding fair prices for your upcoming holidays? Let us know in the comments, its only fair that we trade secrets now, right? 😉