To me, that map seems like a very confusing bit of UI. The cities themselves are really tiny interaction points, I'm a relatively experienced FPS gamer and hitting those points accurately involves more fumbling than it should. You cannot drag departure/arrival pins. Streetview kind of taught me that this should be a mechanism for manipulating this sort of location reference.
The big one, though, is that layovers are not reflected on the map. Granted, it may push me slightly towards more expensive flights, but I would appreciate the ability to see the grid of ugliness and waiting I'm buying into to get that super cheap ticket.
I don't think that map as it is now is worth the screen real estate.
The whole thing has "designed by an engineer" all over it. From hidden UI that reveals itself by clicking/hovering on various elements, to the entire process being limited to one screen which various pop-out elements and transformations. There is little consistency in the design, and poor or no usage of contrast to separate information visually.
When clicking the large blue button to the right of a flight, several rows of return flights drop down below that. The only visual distinction between these specific sub-rows and the other departing flights below is a thin blue/gray border on the sides.
Going from A to B is called an "Outbound flight", while going from B to A is called a "Return flight". Copy is very important in UI design. It should be outbound/inbound or depart/return, not some mix of different terminology.
Durations are always "-- Xh -->". What is the point of the arrow if it is always pointing to the right? Why is the duration a lighter shade than the rest of the text?
The left column is a Gawker/Gizmodo style static column that locks in place when scrolling down. The Google search results page doesn't do that.
These are basics, and a company the size of Google with as many employees as it has should be able to get these things right.
Outbound/return is standard terminology all over the travel industry. Including in UK and US, and for trains and for planes: I'm surprised you're not familiar with it.
"Depart" means something different: it refers to the beginning of each leg of the journey. Its opposite is "arrive". So you might have an outbound leg which departs from LAX and arrives in SFO, and then a return leg which departs from SFO and arrives in LAX.
The big one, though, is that layovers are not reflected on the map. Granted, it may push me slightly towards more expensive flights, but I would appreciate the ability to see the grid of ugliness and waiting I'm buying into to get that super cheap ticket.
I don't think that map as it is now is worth the screen real estate.