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The Cheapest Route to 6 Continents

flightfox.com

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Re: The Cheapest Route to 6 Continents

#51

Post by todsul »

ashbrahma wrote: post #46
todsul wrote: post #40

Here are the winning flight details: This is a 6-Continent RTW itinerary for $1,730. We personally verified that it's a valid itinerary, and at the time of checking, all flights could be booked. JFK 18-Oct-2012 GEO 18-Oct-2012 Delta (New York, US to Georgetown, Guyana) GEO 25-Oct-2012 JFK 25-Oct-2012 Delta (Georgetown, Guyana to New York, US) JFK 14-Nov-2012 TXL 15-Nov-2012 Air Berlin (New York, US to Berlin, Germany…

This looks like a combination of one-way and RT tickets. Do your experts give instructions on how these tickets can be booked relatively quickly?

Just to follow up on laumac's comment, the booking instructions tend to be a large part of the secret sauce. In this case, we fully verified them and all the flights were bookable at the time of verification. We disallowed a few itineraries that didn't properly visit all continents. As an aside, it was interesting to define what countries fit in which continents. For example, Guam, Curacao, Turkey.

Re: The Cheapest Route to 6 Continents

#52

Post by skeletonjelly »

todsul wrote: post #50
science_robot wrote: post #25

Why would you use a human flight expert instead of an algorithm?

Hi science_robot, The entire premise of Flightfox is that humans beat machines. Of course, in some cases if you only consider price this is debatable, but in many more cases, humans really do win. Why? Because there is a lot of flight data and there is a material cost to performing a search. If you want a 6-Continent RTW trip, a flight search engine can't run 1,000,000 queries just to find you the cheapest route. The…

Out of interest, how hard is it to get data feeds? Do you have to pay or is cost based on referrals? Do you have to enter an agreement? Understand if you can't answer.

Re: The Cheapest Route to 6 Continents

#53

Post by todsul »

mseebach wrote: post #49
laumac wrote: post #10

For the cheapest route ($1,730), here are the cities visited: Depart New York - Georgetown (South Am) - New York (North Am) - Berlin (Europe) - Agadir (Africa) - London (Europe) - Turkey (Europe) - Tehran (Asia) - Kuala Lumpur (Asia) - Perth (Oceania) - Bangkok (Asia) - End New York

Geography nitpick: The airport in Istanbul is actually east of the Bosporus, making it Asia.

Hey mseebach,

We had a few issues in the beginning defining these border countries and decided to allow Istanbul as Europe, but will definitely group it for Asia in future.

We had a handful of difficult decisions, but luckily the winning entry visited all continents without contention.

Guam was the tough one for us. Would you say Oceania?

Re: The Cheapest Route to 6 Continents

#54

Post by todsul »

ashbrahma wrote: post #43
laumac wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks Matt, it's definitely something we're discussing at the moment. Fares can disappear at anytime though.

Since fares can expire/disappear at anytime - do the experts still get to keep their commission if its gone by the time the contest creator decides to book it? Do experts have time caveats around their entries? Edit: Grammar

As you can imagine, this is a fairly big challenge for us. As we grow it will become less important because experts in your timezone will tend to reply, but now, we simply implore customers to book quickly. We haven't had too many issues because a lot of the value comes from not-so-temporal factors.

Aside from that, we offer a full refund to anyone that asks for any reason.

Re: The Cheapest Route to 6 Continents

#55

Post by Alex3917 »

laumac wrote: post #33
GodsMoon wrote: post #28

Can I pay a small fee and see all the results? I would even pay a monthly fee for that. I would be very interested in that.

You can create your own flight contest and note exactly which cities you want to visit and we'll find you the best/cheapest itinerary. We're discussing now about opening up the results of this RTW contest for a smaller fee, would anyone else be interested in that?

I'd throw in 5 or 10 bucks to see that.

Re: The Cheapest Route to 6 Continents

#57

Post by todsul »

kapkapkap wrote: post #38
laumac wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can create your own flight contest and note exactly which cities you want to visit and we'll find you the best/cheapest itinerary. We're discussing now about opening up the results of this RTW contest for a smaller fee, would anyone else be interested in that?

I think people most of us are curious to see the detailed results but I don't think more than a few people would be willing to shell out any $. Perhaps consider opening up the detailed results for this contest as a one-time-thing? I think that the interest+publicity you will receive (in addition to already being #1 on HN) would greatly out-weigh the few hundred bucks that you might get from a handful of people who'd…

Love the idea; we'll definitely give it some thought, especially how the experts can profit from these fees well after they post the flight option.

Aside: we really didn't expect this post to get to the top of HN. Our intern was running around the apartment saying, "I told you we should have planned better."

Re: The Cheapest Route to 6 Continents

#58

Post by todsul »

skeletonjelly wrote: post #52
todsul wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi science_robot, The entire premise of Flightfox is that humans beat machines. Of course, in some cases if you only consider price this is debatable, but in many more cases, humans really do win. Why? Because there is a lot of flight data and there is a material cost to performing a search. If you want a 6-Continent RTW trip, a flight search engine can't run 1,000,000 queries just to find you the cheapest route. The…

Out of interest, how hard is it to get data feeds? Do you have to pay or is cost based on referrals? Do you have to enter an agreement? Understand if you can't answer.

List price (for minimum monthly spend) is in the 10s of thousands, but of course everyone does deals to reduce fees at this level. The problem is that those data feeds don't hold the key to the best flights. We're trying to leverage the stuff that won't be in data feeds for at least a decade (likely forever).

Re: The Cheapest Route to 6 Continents

#59

Post by skeletonjelly »

todsul wrote: post #58
skeletonjelly wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of interest, how hard is it to get data feeds? Do you have to pay or is cost based on referrals? Do you have to enter an agreement? Understand if you can't answer.

List price (for minimum monthly spend) is in the 10s of thousands, but of course everyone does deals to reduce fees at this level. The problem is that those data feeds don't hold the key to the best flights. We're trying to leverage the stuff that won't be in data feeds for at least a decade (likely forever).

Thanks! Must be hard to be a startup wanting to get into this industry then (edit: without an obvious capital injection)?

Re: The Cheapest Route to 6 Continents

#60

Post by damian2000 »

todsul wrote: post #40

Here are the winning flight details: This is a 6-Continent RTW itinerary for $1,730. We personally verified that it's a valid itinerary, and at the time of checking, all flights could be booked. JFK 18-Oct-2012 GEO 18-Oct-2012 Delta (New York, US to Georgetown, Guyana) GEO 25-Oct-2012 JFK 25-Oct-2012 Delta (Georgetown, Guyana to New York, US) JFK 14-Nov-2012 TXL 15-Nov-2012 Air Berlin (New York, US to Berlin, Germany…

Its fascinating that some of these destinations seem initially to be way off the beaten track, e.g. Kiev, Perth, Agadir. Never thought they would feature on any cheapest RTW itinerary.
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