Google Flights Is Testing Basic Economy Filters

Google Flights is far and away the best search engine for flights, but it has lacked an important feature: It does not allow users to filter out basic economy. That has been the 1 true limitation of an otherwise very useful site.

Now, that’s changing. Google has introduced filters that let users weed out basic economy fares when searching for a flight. Not everybody can see them, though. It appears to still be a test, and you may not be in the target audience.

Let’s look at how this works in practice.

How Google Flights Lets You Exclude Basic Economy

At Upgraded Points, we often use Google Flights as our first stop in a flight search. Often, it can be the only one; that’s how good it is. The site’s usefulness has only grown over time, with the addition of previously invisible Southwest Airlines flights and a notice of the baggage allowance, for example.

But one thing it would not let you do is exclude basic economy, the cheapest fare class on many airlines, which comes with a host of restrictions — from being unable to choose a seat to boarding last. Granted, airline elite status and certain credit cards can bypass many of the restrictions of basic economy, but no one likes flying on a basic economy ticket.

This has been an annoyance for Google Flights users. When selecting Economy from the drop-down menu of fare classes, the fare displayed for a given airline is the lowest, meaning it’s typically the basic economy option. You have to click through before you can see the true, and often much higher, economy fare.

That’s changing now. Google Flights has introduced at least 2 ways to filter out basic economy.

The first is right in the fare class menu, which now lists basic economy as a separate class (even though it’s technically not a different cabin, unlike the other classes the menu lists).

The other option, which at this moment appears to be an alternative and not a complement to the first one, will be found in the filter bar.

Not all users have the “no basic economy” filters enabled, though. Google appears to still be testing this feature. For example, at least one UP staffer could not find either filter option when doing a Google Flights search on April 15 using the Google Chrome browser. The search results looked the same as usual.

The same results, without the basic economy filters, appeared when using Incognito mode in Google Chrome.

In an interesting twist, though, the basic economy filter did appear when using the Microsoft Edge browser in Windows.

At this moment, it also appears that filtering out basic economy is limited to flights between the U.S. or Canada, as well as domestic flights in either nation.

Final Thoughts

The addition of a filter to weed out basic economy fares solves the chief annoyance that Google Flights users have contended with. While the feature appears to still be in testing, and available only for some users, there’s no reason for Google not to roll it out to everybody eventually. We will bring you an update when that happens.