SEARCH engine giant Google last Friday released a new search tool that helps travellers quickly see which airlines serve a specific route, as well as flight times and frequencies.

A quick search on Google's toolbar for flights to and from a particular destination will provide a summary of flight information right on the results page. It also provides a list of destinations with non-stop flights from a particular origin.

This is Google's first move into travel since its recent acquisition of ITA Software, a company specialising in airfare search and pricing systems (TTG Asia e-Daily, May 20, 2011).

“While this flight schedule feature does not currently use ITA’s search technology, this is just a small step towards making richer travel information easier to find,” wrote Petter Wedum, Google software engineer, on Inside Search, the official Google Search blog.

The flight search service is currently available in 10 languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Turkish and Catalan.