Now, Google Assistant will warn you about possible flight delays
What's the story
In a bid to make your travel more comfortable, Google Assistant will offer pre-emptive flight delay information. It will predict flight delays and deliver that information to you well before the airline actually announces it. As part of the move, it will also provide advance delay warnings from its own end, giving you extra time to plan your travel. Here are the finer details.
Working
Flight delay would be predicted in advance
A few months back, Google Flights started offering flight delay predictions using machine learning and historical flight data. The feature predicted possibilities of delays and provided that information to the users - if at least 85% of the results indicated that the flight in question would get delayed. Now, Google Assistant will use the exact same capability, helping fliers check flight status in advance.
Use
How to get flight updates from Assistant?
In order to get flight predictions from Assistant, all you have to do, as always, is ask. You could say, "Hey Google, is my flight on time?" or "Hey Google, what's the status of the *Airline name* flight from Delhi to Bengaluru?" It will immediately process the information and tell you if a delay is predicted and the possible reason for it.
Information
Also, Assistant will proactively notify you about delays
In addition, Google Assistant will also provide proactive notifications if it predicts a delay of your flight (information syncs via Gmail). This would be similar to alerts on upcoming bills and meetings, helping you stay updated about flight timings and plan the travel accordingly.
Benefit
The feature makes Assistant stand out
As the new capability goes beyond providing actual flight delay notifications, it makes Google Assistant stand out from its competitors and other services that notify when a flight gets delayed. There are are some services that offer this kind of prediction, but Google's tight integration of machine learning, mobile, and search makes the whole process extremely simple.