The Cheapest Route to 6 Continents(flightfox.com)
flightfox.com
The Cheapest Route to 6 Continents
http://flightfox.com/contest/18969
26 comments
For those curious, here are the stay times:
Cheers to the person who discovered it.
1 week in Guyana
3 weeks in the U.S.
~11 weeks in Germany
1 week in Morocco
3 weeks in the U.K.
3 weeks in Turkey
11 days in Iran
3 days in Kuala Lumpur
5 days in Australia
2 days in Kuala Lumpur
9 days in Thailand
Cheers to the person who discovered it.
And cheers to you!
Because I was curious, here are the days of the week that the expert used for the travel:
Sunday: 1
Monday: 1
Tuesday: 5
Wednesday: 1
Thursday: 3
Friday: 1
Saturday: 0
6 to 12 weeks in advance according to this reservation agent.
"IAMA Delta/KLM/Air France reservation agent that knows all the tricks to booking low fares and award tickets AMA" http://www.reddit.com/comments/v82rz/c524yi7/?sort=best
"IAMA Delta/KLM/Air France reservation agent that knows all the tricks to booking low fares and award tickets AMA" http://www.reddit.com/comments/v82rz/c524yi7/?sort=best
Very cool site. I'd love to send friends a link to your site and have the itinerary information visible right there on the site -- otherwise you're expecting me to send non-technical people a link into HackerNews to see the details. I know already that will absolutely confuse them and turn them off from the site.
Consider opening up flight itineraries to the public for certain contests if you're trying to gain as much as possible from this sort of public exposure? (Even if that means paying the original contest creator back their $500, that's nothing given the future business you'll generate. Right now this link simply can't spread until more information is visible.)
Consider opening up flight itineraries to the public for certain contests if you're trying to gain as much as possible from this sort of public exposure? (Even if that means paying the original contest creator back their $500, that's nothing given the future business you'll generate. Right now this link simply can't spread until more information is visible.)
Hi Lusr, we'll definitely do this for the next big contest and we'll make sure we get prior approval from the winning expert. Appreciate your comments re exposure, but it's not the contest holder we're worried about; it's more an issue of publicizing our experts' secrets and shortcuts. There's certainly nothing against airline policy in the winning entry, but this is our experts' livelihood. Our flight hackers are everything to us and we'd rather err on the side of maintaining integrity. We'll better plan for this in future, no doubt about it.
$1,730 for six continents‽ My roundtrip ticket from Los Angeles to Kathmandu, Nepal was $1,800!
Small requirements are costly.
"Somewhere on this continent sometime this year" has a lot more room for cost savings than "this particular airport within a narrow time range". Likewise any product or service: "we can do something cheap, but to include requirement X is gonna cost you."
"Somewhere on this continent sometime this year" has a lot more room for cost savings than "this particular airport within a narrow time range". Likewise any product or service: "we can do something cheap, but to include requirement X is gonna cost you."
This looks like a combination of one-way and RT tickets. Do your experts give instructions on how these tickets can be booked relatively quickly?
Just to follow up on laumac's comment, the booking instructions tend to be a large part of the secret sauce. In this case, we fully verified them and all the flights were bookable at the time of verification. We disallowed a few itineraries that didn't properly visit all continents. As an aside, it was interesting to define what countries fit in which continents. For example, Guam, Curacao, Turkey.
I think Istanbul is considered to straddle Europe and Asia.
Fly in to Ataturk (Istanbul), stay for a couple of nights, bus across the river and fly out of SGI (Istanbul). Europe and Asia, done?
Fly in to Ataturk (Istanbul), stay for a couple of nights, bus across the river and fly out of SGI (Istanbul). Europe and Asia, done?
Yes, the experts give step-by-step instructions on how and where to book.
Could you update that post with city names in addition to the airport codes? I think most of us could recognize ~2 of those at most.
todsul beat me to it (good show!), but in the spirit of teaching a person to fish:
for airport in JFK GEO TXL SXF AGA LGW LTN SAW IKA KUL PER BKK KBP; do
curl "http://airportcode.riobard.com/airport/$airport?fmt=JSON";
echo;
sleep 1;
done
Author of airportcode.riobard.com here. Couldn't believe my eyes when I saw someone wrote a script to call that ancient API of mine from a few years back. Thank you for the `sleep 1` =)
I haven't maintained that service for a long time, and I've got a dozen or so emails suggesting ways to improve the API. I'm not sure what I should do with it, given that the data is really scrapped from Wikipedia and pretty hard to keep it up-to-date. Any suggestions?
I haven't maintained that service for a long time, and I've got a dozen or so emails suggesting ways to improve the API. I'm not sure what I should do with it, given that the data is really scrapped from Wikipedia and pretty hard to keep it up-to-date. Any suggestions?
Ha! Sorry, didn't mean to resurrect a dead project. I just searched for an API to the airport codes and ran with it.
I was actually hoping to find just a data dump of them somewhere, but if you can't I suppose no such thing publicly exists.
My personal recommendation is to do what you want to do. If you don't want to maintain it, perhaps add a note about that, but whatever. You've got no obligation.
I was actually hoping to find just a data dump of them somewhere, but if you can't I suppose no such thing publicly exists.
My personal recommendation is to do what you want to do. If you don't want to maintain it, perhaps add a note about that, but whatever. You've got no obligation.
Please don't feel sorry about it. I'm actually quite happy to see it's still useful for someone today. I'm just not sure what to do with it next. Right now it doesn't cost me anything to run it anyway. Thanks very much for your idea :)
I was in searching of such a data dump before I wrote AirportCode, but like you said, it's not really available. Some websites sell these data for big fees, which I couldn't pay for, so I ended up scraping Wikipedia for the data. And these things change over the time, which makes it rather complicated to maintain.
I'm thinking maybe something like open source data would be helpful to make these kinds of data available to the public, and let the public to update and maintain it so everyone could benefit from it.
I was in searching of such a data dump before I wrote AirportCode, but like you said, it's not really available. Some websites sell these data for big fees, which I couldn't pay for, so I ended up scraping Wikipedia for the data. And these things change over the time, which makes it rather complicated to maintain.
I'm thinking maybe something like open source data would be helpful to make these kinds of data available to the public, and let the public to update and maintain it so everyone could benefit from it.
http://openflights.org/data.html has a pretty decent airports data set!
Ha, that's the one I'm dreaming about! Thanks!
Doesn't work on Windows ;)
Sure it does. Install cygwin. (Or something else like that.) No serious computer user should be without a good shell. Powershell may be fine, too. There's probably some way to convince it to understand the JSON as a native object.
$wc = New-Object "System.Net.WebClient"
$airports = @("JFK", "GEO", "TXL", "SXF", "AGA", "LGW", "LTN", "SAW", "IKA", "KUL", "PER", "BKK", "KBP")
foreach($airport in $airports) {
$wc.DownloadString("http://airportcode.riobard.com/airport/" + $airport + "?fmt=json")
}Done, please see above.
Just wow, unbelievable!
Though I have a question: How have you confirmed the last two steps (BKK to KBP to JFK)? I tried Aerosvit site, Hipmunk and Skyscanner and haven't been able to replicate this result.
RTW (round the world, I assume) may have some special meaning in this context, but to the lay person, that itenerary does not cross all degrees of longitude and, notably, not the dateline.
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.
Perth is not off the beaten track. It's the San Fran of Australia!
What? Perth is, colloquially, the arsehole of nowhere.
Perth is one of the remotest cities in the world (along with Honolulu), it is around 3,000 km to the nearest city, with a huge desert in the way.
It might be the San Fran of Australia if you are a miner.
It might be the San Fran of Australia if you are a miner.
Amen, I live in Perth and its an awesome place. I meant its off the beaten track of tourists coming to Australia - something like <5% of tourist visitors to Aus take the time to visit Perth.
Perth is the cheapest way to visit Australia if you are already in the Asia region.
that depends. Cheapest to get there? Because a cup of coffee there will set you back more than in sydney these days
After you have done Perth, then what?
Fremantle & Rottnest island are good for tourists and cheap to travel to.
Can you break down the price by flight? Or would that be too much information? I'd be interested to see how much each flight costs.
Hi,
I'm the creator of this itinerary. This is a site with great potential. If you appreciate the effort it took to come up with the trip and are interested in trying out the site, please follow my referral link and you'll get a 25% discount on your first flight!
http://flightfox.com/referral/16686
Thanks :)
Michael
How did you find BKK to KBP to JFK flight? Skyscanner and Hipmunk don't return this within the results. But so doesn't Aerosvit site.
I'm new to this site. Are PMs possible? If so, PM me.
No, PMs are not possible, but my email is bblyuher AT gmail dot com. Thanks!
No problem :) Sent!
I feel bad for piggybacking like that, but I'm planning a trip (probably WAW-BKK) and this kind of insight would help me a lot. If you could copy me on that email at notabing --at-- gmail.com, I'd be mighty grateful. :)
I'm interested in your magic as well. If you don't mind, you can reach me at kornholijo at gmail.com. Thanks!
Any flight in particular? I can't give it all away as that would be unfair to Flightfox, as well as other experts. Flightfox really is a very good site where experts work hard finding you the best price for your particular needs.
I'm New Jersey - would love to know how you found the JFK-BKK flight as well, please e-mail me usmanc---at----gmail. No need to give it all away - I plan to use Flightfox in the future for complicated travel. I just did a crazy complicated Middle East and Asia trip, it would have been worth $50 to me just to see other options than what my travel agent booked.
Hi,
The price above doesn't hold for the opposite direction. Everyone asking me for flight prices, go to flightfox and I'm sure you'll be happy with the results.
Thanks,
Michael
Likewise, bittered [at] gmail.com.
Kayak brings it up for $331 if you search BKK to JFK:
http://www.kayak.com/#/flights/bkk-JFK/2013-04-18
What's interesting is that BKK>JFK is a cheaper itinerary than BKK>KBP so if you wanted to travel BKK>KBP you are better of booking BKK>JFK and throwing away the last leg.
http://www.kayak.com/#/flights/bkk-JFK/2013-04-18
What's interesting is that BKK>JFK is a cheaper itinerary than BKK>KBP so if you wanted to travel BKK>KBP you are better of booking BKK>JFK and throwing away the last leg.
cool! How long did it take you to build this routing?
Quite a long time. I didn't think I could get a price this low intially, but if you have a lot of good sources, anything is possible eventually :)
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
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?
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?
Guam is technically part of Oceania.
Although it isn't really part of the "region" as such.
Although it isn't really part of the "region" as such.
For the winning intinerary, it's a moot point as both Europe and Asia are represented at different stops.
Istanbul Atatürk (TAV) airport is Europe, Sabiha Gökçen (SAW) is in Asia. The border is the straight of Bosporus.
Continents are a rather vague concept[1]. Any definition is going to be arbitrary. For the purposes of your contest, I think the spirit would be to have gone to the continents "proper", i.e. I wouldn't count Guam at all, but say the continents are the mainlands of: NA, SA, Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia, Antarctica. I'd be inclined to allow New Zealand as part of Australia as the only exception.
1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uBcq1x7P34
Istanbul Atatürk (TAV) airport is Europe, Sabiha Gökçen (SAW) is in Asia. The border is the straight of Bosporus.
Continents are a rather vague concept[1]. Any definition is going to be arbitrary. For the purposes of your contest, I think the spirit would be to have gone to the continents "proper", i.e. I wouldn't count Guam at all, but say the continents are the mainlands of: NA, SA, Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia, Antarctica. I'd be inclined to allow New Zealand as part of Australia as the only exception.
1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uBcq1x7P34
As a bonus, that would make the Brits very happy :-)
Other notable exceptions I can think of are Indonesia, Vancouver island and Manhattan.
I think you should extend each land mass to wherever the sea floor reaches a given depth (100 meters or so?), and then do a transitive closure on those to get continent boundaries.
Other notable exceptions I can think of are Indonesia, Vancouver island and Manhattan.
I think you should extend each land mass to wherever the sea floor reaches a given depth (100 meters or so?), and then do a transitive closure on those to get continent boundaries.
> I'd be inclined to allow New Zealand as part of Australia as the only exception.
Sure - why not, there's only a sea between us that you can fit an area the size of California to Nebraska into ... pretty close really.
Sure - why not, there's only a sea between us that you can fit an area the size of California to Nebraska into ... pretty close really.
Allow it as part of the australian continent, despite the water. The alternative is to not recognize it as part of any continent. Just like how California and Nebraska are part of the same continent despite, what, three deserts and two mountain ranges between them.
Did I mention that any definition of continents is arbitrary?
Did I mention that any definition of continents is arbitrary?
Are you saying NZ is its own continent? Or that the continent should be referred to as Oceania?
[deleted]
> Geography nitpick: The airport in Istanbul is actually east of the Bosporus, making it Asia.
Nitpick of nitpick: The larger airport in İstanbul (Atatürk International Airport) is on the European side, the smaller (Sabiha Gökçen International Airport, serving mainly low cost airlines and domestic flights) is on the Asian side.
Nitpick of nitpick: The larger airport in İstanbul (Atatürk International Airport) is on the European side, the smaller (Sabiha Gökçen International Airport, serving mainly low cost airlines and domestic flights) is on the Asian side.
Feature request: be able to see the fare some days after it's "expired", or pay the same bounty and see the fare, too.
Thanks Matt, it's definitely something we're discussing at the moment. Fares can disappear at anytime though.
Absolutely, but it's cool to see how folks constructed it :)
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.
Aside from that, we offer a full refund to anyone that asks for any reason.
I am curious about the scalability of such an endeavor. If you have to verify the fares by hand, you need a certain minimum amount of return before it becomes worth it.
For example: I live in SFO. I might want to fly down to Vegas for the weekend, any weekend from now till (say) September, for $150rt. How much overhead would you charge to make it worth your while?
Also: how do you settle disputes? Say I get an itinerary from the contest (supposedly verified by you), and it doesn't work for me. Now what do I do?
And finally (apologize for too many questions): what about travel documents? Apparently, even if you're transitioning through LHR, you need a British visa if you're not from a certain blessed list of countries. What if I don't have a visa, but you end up sending me through London?
Please don't get me wrong: I like the idea. I'm just trying to wrap my head around how it can be scaled.....
For example: I live in SFO. I might want to fly down to Vegas for the weekend, any weekend from now till (say) September, for $150rt. How much overhead would you charge to make it worth your while?
Also: how do you settle disputes? Say I get an itinerary from the contest (supposedly verified by you), and it doesn't work for me. Now what do I do?
And finally (apologize for too many questions): what about travel documents? Apparently, even if you're transitioning through LHR, you need a British visa if you're not from a certain blessed list of countries. What if I don't have a visa, but you end up sending me through London?
Please don't get me wrong: I like the idea. I'm just trying to wrap my head around how it can be scaled.....
Hi ajays, sorry for the confusion; we only verified flights by hand for this contest because it was somewhat contentious. With other contests, we let the contest holder rate/vet entries. If a flight hacker repeatedly enters bogus flights, we would deal with them. But that hasn't happened yet. It's in everyone's interests to spend time posting legitimate flights.
Right now, SFO to LAS isn't an optimal route for Flightfox. This will change very soon, but right now price is key and if you already know short domestic routes well, there's less chance we can help. In the near future, we'll capitalize on non-financial value of flights. This is really where we'll innovate.
If you aren't satisfied, for whatever reason, we offer a full refund. You generally need to ask for a refund within three days because we auto-award contests if they're abandoned. Our theory is that if you're not happy, you deserve your money back.
As for your last question about docs, we tend to leave that in the hands of the traveler. That should change soon as we build out the site (it's still very early days). We want Flightfox to be your one-stop-shop for flights, including all non-price info and all the tips and tricks that will make flying a much better experience.
Right now, SFO to LAS isn't an optimal route for Flightfox. This will change very soon, but right now price is key and if you already know short domestic routes well, there's less chance we can help. In the near future, we'll capitalize on non-financial value of flights. This is really where we'll innovate.
If you aren't satisfied, for whatever reason, we offer a full refund. You generally need to ask for a refund within three days because we auto-award contests if they're abandoned. Our theory is that if you're not happy, you deserve your money back.
As for your last question about docs, we tend to leave that in the hands of the traveler. That should change soon as we build out the site (it's still very early days). We want Flightfox to be your one-stop-shop for flights, including all non-price info and all the tips and tricks that will make flying a much better experience.
Thanks for the response. It is a neat idea, and I'll try it out soon. I wish you folks all the success!
I'd be interested in a similar contest but with business class seats instead.
It would be interesting to see how much it takes to fly around the world in comfort :)
It would be interesting to see how much it takes to fly around the world in comfort :)
We can definitely see that contest coming up soon. With this contest we thought sub-$2k would be a huge stretch, but the flight hackers seemed to manage it with ease. For business, we can't imagine it being less than $5-6k, but we'll see. Sub-$5k would be amazing.
I would also be curious with a maximum of say 1 or 2 month timeframe. If I was actually curious in an "around the world" trip, I don't think I'd want to stay 11 weeks in Germany, ha.
"Sorry, only the contest owner can view flight details."
they use still use a similar principle in India for a lot of travel -- its called a travel agency. I suppose flightfox is just making it very clear who the best travel agents are.
Gluck, I'll give this a shot during my next international travel.
Gluck, I'll give this a shot during my next international travel.
Hi there, in one respect you're right; we absolutely value human-power in flight search, which is why we're crowdsourced. But compared to traditional agents, we're much more aligned to your interests. Our experts don't take commissions, so they only suggest flights on their merits. If someone posts a better/cheaper flight, they simply win.
Also, with crowdsourcing, you get access to expert skill and local knowledge all over the world. You're not limited to the skill and experience of one person. Frequent flyer programs are important in this respect because few agents have an in-depth knowledge of these programs. Airlines generally don't pay commissions on those flights, so it doesn't make sense for agents to become specialists in this area.
Our experts come from all walks: agents, travelers, frequent flyers, etc. So you get access to a wide array of experience.
Also, with crowdsourcing, you get access to expert skill and local knowledge all over the world. You're not limited to the skill and experience of one person. Frequent flyer programs are important in this respect because few agents have an in-depth knowledge of these programs. Airlines generally don't pay commissions on those flights, so it doesn't make sense for agents to become specialists in this area.
Our experts come from all walks: agents, travelers, frequent flyers, etc. So you get access to a wide array of experience.
It's not what their achieving that matters, its how...
I see the page and the prices but their website literally does nothing...
People who need a flight can create a contest and then flight hackers compete against each other to find them the best deals/flights. This RTW contest was an experiment to see how far our hackers could go, and considering a RTW itinerary usually costs $4k+, their results are pretty impressive.
Sorry, I should have clarified. I wasn't able to click to actually see the itineraries created even though there are "View Details" links. The other links I tried to click on the page also just hung. I guess all the hn traffic took them down.
Edit: I see your other post above now with the cities! Thanks!!
Edit: I see your other post above now with the cities! Thanks!!
My first thought upon clicking through was "Wow, a big crowd-sourced database of very cheap flights to random destinations. I think I know how I'm going to plan my next vacation!"
But then: "Sorry, only the contest owner can view flight details." And there's nothing more for me to see here and I go back to what I was doing. Very cool concept otherwise, though.
But then: "Sorry, only the contest owner can view flight details." And there's nothing more for me to see here and I go back to what I was doing. Very cool concept otherwise, though.
Hi actuary,
Apologies for the confusion. Typically, a customer puts up a contest so our flight hackers can find them the best or cheapest flight.Often this contains a lot of personal information, as well as the secrets of our flight experts. Flightfox hinges on competitive advantage, so we keep the flight details private.
I've posted some of the flight details above, so you can at least see where the flight stops.
But be assured that if you put your own contest up, you can see everything. Also, we're constantly adding more and more flight information to help you make an informed decision.
Apologies for the confusion. Typically, a customer puts up a contest so our flight hackers can find them the best or cheapest flight.Often this contains a lot of personal information, as well as the secrets of our flight experts. Flightfox hinges on competitive advantage, so we keep the flight details private.
I've posted some of the flight details above, so you can at least see where the flight stops.
But be assured that if you put your own contest up, you can see everything. Also, we're constantly adding more and more flight information to help you make an informed decision.
Love the idea. You'd really have me if I could at least see something about the itinerary. Dates, cities, at least. Why do you have a "view details" link that does nothing? I doubt that gives away enough to render your service unnecessary.
Hi Zwass, working on it right now. Just trying to keep the server up. But we'll get to it as soon as we can. For most contests it's important that only the contest holder can see the details, because they're often quite personal. But in this case we'll post the itinerary because it's quite interesting to see how the winner managed to construct a 6-continent itinerary for $1730. Will post back soon.
Awesome. I see your point, and am excited to see the results for this one.
Is there going to be a way to create more flexible contests like this as a Flightfox user? Right now it looks like I can only do the same sorts of things that I can do on other travel sites (one way, round trip, multi city)
I'd love to be able to put in something like me -> (any of these 10 destinations) or me + friend who lives elsewhere + friend who lives elsewhere -> (any of these 10 destinations)
I'd love to be able to put in something like me -> (any of these 10 destinations) or me + friend who lives elsewhere + friend who lives elsewhere -> (any of these 10 destinations)
At the moment you can put in whatever you want - we have with this contest - you can write a custom destination like "Anywhere in Europe" or "Round the World". There's a text box where you can put any requirements you like, you can even ask for help to use your 100k United miles etc. We've left it completely open to see how people use it and then build on that.
How is this different than buying an around the world ticket through an airline alliance (e.g. OneWorld, Star)? Those tickets tend to start at around $2000, sometimes less: http://www.oneworld.com/flights/round-the-world-fares/onewor...
OTW fares were legitimate entries in this contest, but they don't start very near $2000 for hitting all six continents. I briefly checked, and would've entered one in this contest if it were that cheap. :)
Even at low season, if you price out an itinerary starting/ending in North America and hitting all six, using OneWorld's online calculator, it always comes out $3500+. You can get lower if you don't have the six-continent requirement, though.
Even at low season, if you price out an itinerary starting/ending in North America and hitting all six, using OneWorld's online calculator, it always comes out $3500+. You can get lower if you don't have the six-continent requirement, though.
A $2000 RTW ticket wouldn't include taxes and it wouldn't go to all 6 continents. All the prices in this contest include taxes and stop on every continent (except Antarctica).
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?
Don't miss an opportunity to provide encouragement for people to create tempting routes. e.g., requester posts bounty for interesting trip. Pays the winning expert. Then the public can pay a smaller fee (to the requester) to piggyback on their info.
e.g., requester might've paid a $250 bounty, but they can make it back from 50 people buying the info for $5 each, less FlightFox's fee.
Love the idea, BTW.
e.g., requester might've paid a $250 bounty, but they can make it back from 50 people buying the info for $5 each, less FlightFox's fee.
Love the idea, BTW.
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 seriously be willing to pay to see these results.
When a post is on top of HN, I don't think we're used to seeing the meat of the content stuck behind a quasi-paywall.
EDIT: It looks like you've posted the results publicly now, nice.
When a post is on top of HN, I don't think we're used to seeing the meat of the content stuck behind a quasi-paywall.
EDIT: It looks like you've posted the results publicly now, nice.
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."
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."
[deleted]
I'd throw in 5 or 10 bucks to see that.
There doesn't appear to be a way to register without creating a contest. As someone who'd doesn't have any trip plans right now (and doesn't want to clutter your database with fake data), I'd like to know if there's a simple registration page? I tried just /register to no avail.
Hi martin,
The only registration options are 1) becoming a customer, or 2) becoming an expert. There's no advantage to registering because only customers can see flight details for their contests and only experts can post flight options. Otherwise, what you see as a guest is all there is.
This will of course change as we build out the site, but right now it's just a one-trick-pony.
The only registration options are 1) becoming a customer, or 2) becoming an expert. There's no advantage to registering because only customers can see flight details for their contests and only experts can post flight options. Otherwise, what you see as a guest is all there is.
This will of course change as we build out the site, but right now it's just a one-trick-pony.
Very cool! I wish we didn't need humans to find flight tickets, though. Hipmunk is getting pretty good, but I always end up tweaking the itinerary manually. Seems such a simple problem (except this particular one, which is NP-complete)
They've learned an interesting lesson from other travel sites too, in that they emailed me when I didn't complete my contest and asked why. Very nice.
Is this using an eight content model, including Antarctica, Oceania, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, Australia, and Africa?
I was hoping for the 6 Continent model, which would include Antarctica! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent#Number_of_continents But no, search for "6 Continents:" (including the ":") on the submitted site:
- North America includes Central America
- South America is mostly the mainland
- Europe is borded by Istanbul (Turkey), Azerbaijan and the Caucasus in Russia
- Africa is mostly the mainland bordered by Egypt
- Asia is the Middle East, East of the Caucasus, and Indonesia (West Papua)
- Oceania is Australia, NZ and the islandsWhy do you require my email address and a place where I was referred to search a flight?
When you launch a flight contest, there are real people on the other end who are searching just for you, so we need to let you know when they've found a great flight. As for asking how you found out about us, we're just gathering information on what works best for customer acquisition.
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 data providers impose pretty tight limits. When you hit those limits in aggregate, you risk very high costs.
Apart from that, and most importantly, humans have a wealth of knowledge that simply isn't catalogued. That's because it's too broad, too often changing, too obscure, or the airlines don't want OTAs to use that info; e.g. award flight availability across all airlines.
Our challenge now is to expand into many of these non-price factors and offer value even for short trips where we can't beat airline advertised prices. But as you can imagine, in its current state, Flightfox really comes into its own for complicated flights, even if just slightly complex.
The posted contest really beats anything on the web by a large amount. 6 continents for $1730 is pretty remarkable, or at least we think. It's not us who found it, it's our experts, who are the fabric of Flightfox.
Hope that helps.
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 data providers impose pretty tight limits. When you hit those limits in aggregate, you risk very high costs.
Apart from that, and most importantly, humans have a wealth of knowledge that simply isn't catalogued. That's because it's too broad, too often changing, too obscure, or the airlines don't want OTAs to use that info; e.g. award flight availability across all airlines.
Our challenge now is to expand into many of these non-price factors and offer value even for short trips where we can't beat airline advertised prices. But as you can imagine, in its current state, Flightfox really comes into its own for complicated flights, even if just slightly complex.
The posted contest really beats anything on the web by a large amount. 6 continents for $1730 is pretty remarkable, or at least we think. It's not us who found it, it's our experts, who are the fabric of Flightfox.
Hope that helps.
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)?
So coming up with your own data feed from human-generated/sourced data? ;)
Because an algorithm probably hasn't been written that is smart enough to do the complex tasks required in these cases. It would probably also need the ability to scrape websites for latest prices.
Yes, exactly. Travelling Salesman with distance being measured in dollars.
Need to add one more dimension. Distance is dollars, given a particular day of the year.
Is "View Details" supposed to redirect to the same page?
Love it.
It would be great to add premium economy in there too. :-)
It would be great to add premium economy in there too. :-)
working for me..
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.
Any questions, please ask.