Google has announced that it will be adding a brand new feature to its Google Flight search engine that will help users tackle flight delays. The feature will also help users understand the complexity of fares on budget airline travel. It’s often very disappointing when you are at the airport and you find out that your flight has been canceled. Google wants to make it easier for you to predict flight cancellations earlier.
The new feature on Google Flight will do that. But it’s not just your everyday tool that gathers flight cancellation data from airlines and relays it to you. The feature will take advantage of machine learning technology and existing historical data to predict flight delays and cancellations. In other words, instead of waiting until a cancellation is confirmed, the feature will gather relevant historical data and utilize machine learning to predict whether a certain flight will be delayed or canceled even before airlines know.
Google says that the tool will not flag flights until there is an 80% confidence level. But what does this mean? The new Google feature will collect historical data relevant to each flight and leverage on the use of artificial intelligence to predict whether the flight will be delayed or canceled. However, the feature will not notify you of these predictions right away. It will only do so if the likelihood of delays or cancellations is at least 80%. This is a fairly high confidence score and it will more often than not predict accurately if a flight will be delayed or canceled.
You should still get to the airport on time even if there’s a delay or cancellation prediction just to be sure of what’s going on. The new Google feature will also try to give you the reason for the cancellation or delay. This could be something to do with weather, the aircraft arriving late or any other factor. The delay information will appear on all search results on Google Flight.
For flights that have been flagged for delays or cancellations, progress can be tracked using the flight number. Users can also use the flight route or the airline’s name to track possible delays and cancellations as predicted by the new Google Flight feature. There is no doubt that this is quite a great addition to Google Flights and many people will find very useful applications for it.
But it’s not the only new feature that it’s coming to the search engine. Google has also added another feature that will help travelers understand the complexity of fares. The tool will give users the chance to know what’s included in the economy and basic fares and what’s excluded based on their ticket price. Low-cost fares are always a great option for people traveling on a budget but they come with too many terms and conditions. The new Google Flights feature will display these terms and conditions to help users make sense of everything.
