San Diego Google Flights (2024)

FAQs

Is Google Flights the best place to search for flight? ›

Google Flights is a reliable, legitimate, and trustworthy site for flight searching. In general, its prices are accurate and reflect the same prices as you'll find on the airline websites and other OTAs. However, in rare instances, Google Flights prices are wrong, or more accurately, the price info is outdated.

Some flights might not show up when: The flights are sold out or unavailable. The carrier hasn't yet been added to Google Flights.

You can find cheap flight deals to anywhere in the world on Google Flights. Just enter your departure city, choose Anywhere as the destination, and select Explore. You can pick specific dates or leave departure and return dates blank if your plans are flexible. The cheapest fares to popular destinations will appear.

While booking your flight on a Sunday helps you get the lowest price, actually flying on a Thursday may help you save an average of 16 percent off airfare. Data shows that, almost across the board, travelers who flew on Thursdays instead of Sunday saved this much on both domestic and international flights.

Momondo – Momondo is outstanding for finding the absolute cheapest fares that you won't see elsewhere. By double checking the price here, you'll find cheaper fares than Google Flights 90% of the time, sometimes by a few hundred dollars.

Contact your carrier's customer service

When in doubt, call the carrier's customer service line and ask an agent to check how full the flight is. It might not be the most convenient option, but it will yield an answer. If you dread the idea of waiting on hold, many airlines offer customer service chat features.

No single day of the week is best to book a flight. You can find deals any day of the week since flight prices fluctuate with demand. Airlines might offer sales, increase the number of seats on a route or even lower prices to match a competitor, so there's no actual pattern in what day of the week has the best deals.

Southwest stands out among domestic carriers for not sharing its fare prices with sites like Expedia and Google. Sally French is a travel rewards expert who joined NerdWallet in 2020.

There is one major exception, however. Southwest Airlines is not included in Google Flights because it doesn't have a partnership with Google. If you are looking for flights on this low-cost airline, you won't see the fares here, so check that company's website separately.

Why is Southwest not on Google Flights? ›

Southwest didn't list its fares for sale through Google or almost any other site by design: It didn't want to put loyalty in the hands of an intermediary. Previously, the only option to book Southwest flights was directly on the airline's website or app.

Demand is outpacing supply

While, yes, airplane production has slowed down, fleet sizes are still increasing—in other words, airlines now have more planes than they did last year. However, demand for travel is still higher in the summer months. High demand + lower supply = higher fares.

Plane tickets usually don't get cheaper closer to the departure date. Flights tend to be the most inexpensive when you book between four months and three weeks before your departure date. According to the CheapAir 2019 Annual Airfare Study, you can expect rates to go up after that period.

After you book, we monitor the price until the first flight in your itinerary departs. We then send you an email to let you know if the price dropped or not. You may also get an email update between booking and departure. If the price dropped, we pay you the difference back in Google Pay.

One study found Google Flights has a 97% accuracy rate for flight schedules and fares.

Google Flights is a powerful and fast way to quickly identify cheaper fares for your flight itinerary. Even if you don't have a specific destination in mind, its “Explore” feature can help you find a trip that's within your budget.

Google Flights' ability to predict fare decreases has been found to be relatively accurate, correctly predicting reductions 77% of the time. However, Google Flights can be slow to update schedules and fares, and its algorithms may prioritize cheaper flights over more convenient options.

Weaknesses of Skyscanner

As with Google Flights, Skyscanner sometimes displays ghost fares that are no longer active. And, while it does have great flexible date searching, its fare calendar doesn't live-update, which means the pricing you see for less frequently searched routes might be incomplete.