Google Flights Will Now Tell You Which Flights Offer Wi-Fi, In-Seat Power

When you're shopping for plane tickets, knowing what amenities will be available on a particular flight can be useful in deciding which ticket to buy. That's why the Google Flights search tool will now display Routehappy's "Happiness Factors" -- such as how much legroom is available or whether a flight offers Wi-Fi or in-seat power.

The information from Routehappy is a natural addition to Google Flights, which doesn't actually let you book your tickets through the service. Instead, its "Best Flights" feature purpose is to scour Google's vast database to show which flights offer the best trade-off between "price, duration, number of stops and sometimes other factors such as amenities and baggage fees." (The search engine also displays all flights available by price, underneath the list of best flights.) Once you select an itinerary, Google allows you to save or share it and redirects to you sites where you can book.

For now, Google Flights is the only place Google integrates Routehappy's data. I wish it would also show up when you enter a flight number in Google Search, a service I often use just to check whether a flight is on time or which terminal it's leaving from. It would be great if Google would also display that flight's amenities so I could plan ahead before I leave home: Do I need to make sure my electronics are charged, or will there be in-seat power? Will I have Wi-Fi access or should I save certain Web pages offline for in-flight reading?

According to Jason Rabinowitz, the data research manager at Routehappy, Google could make that happen since it has licensed Routehappy's data. But for now, I'll just search for that information directly at the Routehappy.com site, where I can get the complete lowdown of what I'm in for: