How to check live flight status and plan a vacation using Google Assistant

It's the holiday season, and Google seems to have just the right tool to get you through. You can now check your live flight status through Google Assistant. Now, if you are travelling this Christmas, you already know how busy this time of the year is for flights and you certainly need to be on top of it in order to get to a place where you can finally relax. But remember that smart and tech-savvy users know what needs to be done to check their flight status in order to plan their trip accordingly.

Like in most cases, a simple Google search query might be sufficient to know the expected arrival, scheduled departure, gate number of your flight etc. But did you ever wonder how does Google churn out all these details so fast and with such accuracy? Well, the answer is Artificial Intelligence or AI, to put it simply. Google uses AI to predict flight delay using arrival and departure times of the same flight in the past, and Google claims at least 85 per cent accuracy with regards to those predictions, which is impressive.

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Going forward, users can keep a tab on their flight status using Google Assistant. Here’s how: 

How to check live flight status using Google Assistant

Step 1: First things first, make sure you have Google Assistant configured on your smartphone. If not, long-press the home button to fire up the Assistant on your Android phone and complete the on-screen instructions to set up Google Assistant.

Step 2: You can ask things like, “Hey Google, is my flight on time?” or “Hey Google, what’s the status of the Vistara flight (number) from Mumbai to Bengaluru?”

Step 3: Within a few seconds, Google Assistant will respond with your flight status and read it aloud. Google Assistant also keeps a tab on your emails. Hence, if you have your flight tickets on email, it will help the Assistant to fetch updated fight details right away.

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How to plan your vacation using Google Assistant

To help travellers plan their vacation, Google has introduced a new tool that’s comprised of historic flight price trends, hotel deals and popular places to visit, depending on your prefered holiday season. At the time of writing this, the tool seems to focus only Americal holidays. But going forward, we are hoping Google to introduce a similar feature for Indian users. Go to https://googletrends.github.io/traveltrends/.

For now, you can search for information on Google Assistant using commands like “Hey Google, what are the best places to visit in Bengaluru?” or “Hey Google, what are some good Chinese restaurants nearby?”