Google launched flight search

In May 2011, Google launched a search for flights in the form of a text prompt on a search query (works, including in Russian, for local air routes). Even then, it became clear that the company is seriously working in this direction and soon travel agents will have to look for a new job ¹ .

And the continuation did not keep waiting. Yesterday, a full-fledged search for airline tickets opened with a normal Google Flights interface. He is still limited to the territory of the United States.
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Searching, displaying prices, and building charts is amazingly fast, even with up to five points of departure and five points of arrival in a single search query, which makes you wonder how it is implemented.

A convenient graphical interface shows the flight schedule between selected points, the cost of a ticket with each airline on a specified date, time of flight.

With the help of individual sliders, you can filter the issue by flight time (there and back) and ticket cost.



The calendar shows which days tickets are cheaper.



And two more sliders filter the issue by the departure / arrival time of each flight (there and back).



In general, travel agencies really need to think about their fate. However, the smartest people thought about it in July 2010, when Google bought ITA Software . By the way, Google's new flight search is actually a modified version of the ITA Matrix Airfare Search , only works an order of magnitude faster.

¹ By the way, the tourism business is the fifth largest industry in the global economy after the oil industry, the automotive industry, and so on. Now up to 10-20% of transactions in this business take place on the Internet, including booking of tours, selection of tickets and booking of hotels. For such a service (selection of a flight and a hotel), the travel agency charges approximately $ 150 from the client, this is the standard fare. So Google really is destroying the global economy, saving people money.