The only part of the holiday season that isn't magical is flying. Tickets are jacked up, airports are busy and delays are inevitable -- especially with the current flight cuts caused by the government shutdown. 

I usually opt to stay at home during the holiday season but I do have a couple of flights on my radar, including visiting my wife's parents in Florida for Thanksgiving 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 swing it. 

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While I do have airline points, I wanted to look around to see whether I could find a good deal. I also hope to be pregnant by then, so I'll have specific travel needs. 

An app called Going came on my radar recently. I've tried to use AI to find cheap flights before without much luck. I had more success with AI trip planners and AI travel agents. Going seemed promising, given it blends AI with human experts to find not only the cheapest flights but also the most convenient for my unique needs. For example, the cheapest flight to Australia might have three layovers, which I wouldn't do. I'd rather pay slightly more for convenience and comfort. 

What to know about the Going app

Going's model was trained on an in-house proprietary dataset with more than 300 billion records on aviation travel. This helps Going make recommendations that other baseline AI models can't reproduce. 

There are three tiers: Free, for economy class domestic flights, Premium ($49/year) for all US and international deals, points and miles and Elite ($199/year), which includes business and first-class deals. 

In Going's fine print, it says: "We don't send flight deals unless they're 40% off. Booking one flight per year will save you hundreds of dollars and pay for the subscription fee many times over."

That's a big claim. 

I'm getting the travel itch already. 

Getting set up 

Given that I wanted to first test out a domestic economy flight, I joined as a free user. I followed the sign-up prompts, then downloaded the app. Once you log in, this is what you'll see:

I input my departure airport and then my destination. Below this, I could also view active deals to other destinations. 

After scrolling, I could see one deal to Tampa. When I clicked on the deal, I expected to see a booking page, but it appeared to display "normal" prices, making the "deal" price seem more competitive in comparison:

What was interesting is that it pulled a random date between November and February to show me a $137 price -- likely the cheapest available -- but I couldn't specify anywhere that I wanted to travel for Thanksgiving. 

The dates I really wanted? $361, according to Google Flights, when I clicked through via Going to book.

Want to know something ironic? Just for fun, I opened up Google Flights in a separate browser, so I could cross-check. Maybe Google Flights was still giving me a discount, coming from the Going link. 

Nope! It was cheaper directly from Google Flights, at $333.

I was a little confused as to where the human expert element came in, as I certainly wasn't seeing 40% cheaper rates via Going vs. Google Flights, for the same dates and flights. 

You can't even select specific dates in Going, only months. 

On standby… 

The first flight experiment failed, so to give Going a good old college try, I upgraded to Premium (the seven-day free trial). Let's see if it can take me Down Under for less. 

That was a short trip! 

I ran a quick search on United and found a round trip from Newark to Adelaide and found one for $1,400. 

For one last try, I searched Going for flights to Tokyo. I found one for $735, which Going said was 51% off. 

When I clicked through Going to book the flight in Google Flights, it suggested Feb. 1-8. I'd never go to Japan for only a week (plus, we'd go there on the way to or from Australia).

Again, I opened up this flight in a new browser in Google Flights to see if I'd land on that same price without being redirected from Going. Surprise, surprise, I found a slightly cheaper flight. Only by $6, but hey, it's cheaper and I found it myself. 

My Going trip is over. 

The verdict 

I was really excited about testing out this AI product. Going used to be Scott's Cheap Flights, which was an iconic newsletter that sent out great deals. I still think this has potential, because I used to use information and deals from that newsletter all the time. 

Going can be a handy travel tool if you're flexible with your dates, but I wasn't. I also didn't feel any of the "human expert" features, and I felt that the 40% off guarantee was a bit misleading. 

I'll sign up for the email list and wait for AI to send me the best deals from my airport, in case I'm looking for a spontaneous trip. But apart from that, I'll be sticking with Google Flights.