Google Flights turned 15 this year, and to mark it the search tool quietly tucked a set of Easter eggs into its results. Search the right route on desktop and, below the price-tracking controls, a "This route in history" card appears — a little museum plaque for the golden age of flight, sitting alongside today's bookable fares. There's been no formal announcement, just a post from a Google Flights product manager confirming 15 legendary routes are hidden in there.
Five that have surfaced so far:
**London Heathrow–New York JFK** (and Paris CDG–JFK): Concorde's transatlantic service, dated 1977.
**San Francisco–Honolulu**: United's 1970 "Friend Ship" 747 launch, complete with mai tais, leis and mention of the upper-deck cocktail lounge.
**Singapore–Sydney**: Singapore Airlines putting the Airbus A380 into commercial service in 2007.
**London Heathrow–Johannesburg**: BOAC's de Havilland Comet, which inaugurated commercial jet passenger service in 1952 — the card notes the trip took 23 hours and 38 minutes with five stops. Try comparing that with today's nonstop.
**London Heathrow–Amsterdam**: KLM's very first flight in 1920, carrying two journalists, newspapers and a letter from London's mayor.
The cards use modern airport codes, so you just type the city pair as normal — any date works. Guessing at the remaining ten, one obvious candidate would be Westray to Papa Westray in Scotland's Orkney Islands, home of the world's shortest scheduled passenger flight. Another good bet: Karachi to Mumbai, retracing J.R.D. Tata's pioneering airmail route via Ahmedabad, which first flew on 15 October 1932.
The backstory is worth knowing too. Google Flights launched on 13 September 2011 as "Flight Search," built on the $700 million ITA Software acquisition. The first version covered only a handful of US cities and roundtrip economy fares — the pitch was speed and easy date comparisons, like finding anywhere within three hours of San Francisco for under $300. Since then it's grown into an international tool with premium cabins, price tracking, a "Cheapest" tab for travellers willing to brave self-transfers, and — since May 2024 — Southwest fares, which the airline had famously kept out of comparison sites.
Why should a holidaymaker care? Partly for the fun of it: plug in LHR–JFK and get a Concorde history lesson with your fare search. But the bigger picture is that Google Flights keeps nudging toward acting like a travel agent rather than a fare table. Its Flight Deals tool now lets you describe the trip you want in plain language and find matching destinations, and recent features include price tracking through AI Mode in Google Search, visibility into airline and hotel award pricing, and even completing hotel bookings inside AI Mode.
The trade-off, as frequent users know, is that AI-generated answers in search can still be patchy or out of date. But the direction of travel is clear: less clicking through filters, more telling the tool what you actually want. In the meantime, hunt down those history cards — the Concorde one alone is worth a search.
