The only part of the holiday season that isn't magical is the flying. Tickets are sold out, airports are overcrowded, delays are inevitable, especially in the current climate. reduced flights due to government shutdown.
I usually prefer to stay home during the holiday season, but I have several flights planned, including a trip to visit my wife's parents in Florida. Thanksgiving Day before they move. And next year I want to visit Australia (where I'm from) in March – maybe even via Japan to see my wife's brother if we can make it.
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Although I have airline points, I wanted to look around to see if I could find a good deal. I also hope to be pregnant by then, so I will have special travel needs.
I recently came across an app called Going. I tried use AI to find cheap flights before without much luck. I've had more success with AI trip planners And travel agents with artificial intelligence. The movement seemed promising given that it combined AI with experts to find not only the cheapest flights, but also the most convenient ones for my unique needs. For example, the cheapest flight to Australia might have three connections, which I wouldn't do. I'd rather pay a little more for convenience and comfort.
What you need to know about the Going app
Going's model was trained on a proprietary dataset of over 300 billion airline travel records. This helps Going make recommendations that other basic AI models cannot replicate.
There are three levels: For freefor domestic flights in economy class, Premium ($49/year) on all transactions, points and miles in the US and abroad, and Elite ($199/year) includes Business Class and First Class offers.
In Going's fine print it says, “We don't send out deals on flights unless they're 40% off.” Booking one flight a year will save you hundreds of dollars and increase your subscription fees many times over.”
This is a big claim.
I already have the travel itch.
Start setting up
Given that I wanted to try out the domestic economy flight first, I joined as a free member. I followed the registration instructions and then downloaded the app. After logging in you will see the following:
I enter the departure airport and then the destination. Below I could also view active offers in other areas.
As I scrolled through, I saw one deal with Tampa. When I clicked on the offer, I expected to see a booking page, but it turned out to have “normal” prices, so the “offer” price seemed more competitive in comparison:
What was interesting was that he picked a random date between November and February to show me a price of $137—probably the cheapest available—but I couldn't specify where I wanted to go for Thanksgiving.
Dates I really wanted? $361, according to Google Flights when I clicked “About booking.”
Want to know something ironic? Just for fun, I opened Google Flights in a separate browser so I could double check. Maybe Google Flights was still giving me a discount based on the Going link.
Nope! It was cheaper directly through Google Flights at $333.
I was a little confused about where the human expert element came in, since I certainly didn't see the 40% lower fares through Going compared to Google Flights for the same dates and flights.
In Going you can't even select specific dates, only months.
In standby mode…
The first flight experiment failed, so to give Going a good old-fashioned college try, I upgraded to Premium (seven-day free trial). Let's see if he can get me to the Underground for less money.
It was a short trip!
I did a quick search on United and found a round trip ticket from Newark to Adelaide and found it for $1400.
As a last ditch attempt, I looked for tickets to Tokyo. I found one for $735 that Going said was 51% off.
When I clicked “Looking to book a flight” in Google Flights, I was offered February 1-8. I would never go to Japan for just a week (besides, we went there on the way to or from Australia).
I opened this flight again in a new browser in Google Flights to see if I would get the same price without being rerouted from Going. Surprise, surprise: I found the flight a little cheaper. It's only $6, but hey, it's cheaper and I found it myself.
My journey has come to an end.
Verdict
I was very excited to try out this AI product. It used to be Scott's Cheap Flights, the iconic newsletter that sent out great deals. I still think it has potential because I used to use the information and suggestions from this newsletter all the time.
Travel can be a handy travel tool if you can be flexible with your dates, but I didn't. I also didn't sense any “human expert” characteristics and felt the 40% off guarantee was a bit misleading.
I'll sign up for the newsletter and wait for the AI to send me the best deals from my airport, in case I'm looking for a spontaneous trip. But other than that, I'll stick with Google Flights.
