Google Has a New Way to Find Cheapest Holiday Flights. How I Found the Best Airfare

Thanksgiving is just over a month away and Christmas is only a few weeks after that. This means millions of Americans are gearing up to travel over the next two months. In fact, 599,814 domestic flights were scheduled in November 2023 and 606,218 domestic flights were scheduled in December 2023, according to reports from the US Department of Transportation. 

If you are one of the millions of people planning to travel by air for the end-of-year holidays, you may be looking for the cheapest available airfare — and Google Flights is unveiling a new feature to help.

Beginning Wednesday, Google is unveiling a new “Cheapest” tab on Google Flights to help travelers save money and find ultra-cheap flights with ease. Here’s how it will work.

Read more: Southwest Airlines Flights Are Now Available on Google Flights

How I found the cheapest flights on Google Flights 

To start, I pulled up Google Flights, which you can do either by heading to www.google.com/travel/flights or searching for “google flights.”

Now, you’ll just need to enter your trip details and tap the “Cheapest” tab to browse the lowest options available. During my testing, I tried to book a flight from LA to NYC from Saturday Nov. 9 through Saturday, Nov. 16. The platform first brought me to a “Best” tab, which shows flights ranked by convenience and price. Then, I toggled over to the “Cheapest” tab, which shows flights strictly based on price. 

On the “Best” tab, airfare started at $176 for a Spirit flight. On the “Cheapest” tab, airfare started as low as $128 for a Frontier flight with an overnight layover in Denver. 

To aggregate the cheapest options, Google Flights is expanding its flight offerings from third parties, such as online travel agents, and providing flight itineraries that may be less convenient, such as flights with longer layovers or booking different legs of the trip across different airlines or booking providers. 

The “Cheapest” tab feature is rolling out globally over the next two weeks ahead of the peak holiday travel season. We’ve already covered the cheapest times to book flights based on destination and time of year, and now, Google Flights is offering a new upgrade for when cost is more of priority than convenience to maximize your travel budget.