Last Minute Caribbean Deals

I posted previously about how Google can help you find a cheap flight. Well, it seems the engineers at Google have taken that to the next level. According to them you can type your flight info into the Google search box and get updates on the status of your flight. Ok, I know Google is taking over the Internet but I am pretty skeptical about a search engine giving me realistic information about an upcoming flight. Well, I decided to put it to the test.So I headed over to the website for my local airport, Tampa International airport. I clicked on the current arriving flights to see what flights were coming in and the current status of their arrival. The TIA website has been pretty good for keeping up on flight delays. This will be a good test for Google to see how accurate they are. According to Google, you just have to type in the airline name followed by the flight number. Let’s check AirTran flight 163 from Atlanta. It’s scheduled to land at 8:36 and is on time.

Ok, I don’t see any flight status here. What’s up Google? The good news is the first search result is for flightstats.com to tell me about the flight. Ok, flightstats.com 1 - Google 0.

Let’s try another flight. I’ll go to one of the next flights which is Delta 1137 coming in from Atlanta. The flight hasn’t even taken off yet (it’s only 8pm here). Let’s see what Google has to say.

Ok, this looks more like it. Google tells me it’s on schedule. That’s good news. This feature was just released so I’m not surprised that it has a few bugs. If you are heading to the airport this could be a quick way to see if your flight is delayed. It’s interesting that Google links you to flightstats.com anyway. I give credit to Google for making things easier. Too bad there isn’t a single place to find all these shortcuts that Google offers. That sounds like a good future post