11 ms·

The Cheapest Route to 6 Continents

266 points by laumac 14y ago

gmig 14y ago
"Sorry, only the contest owner can view flight details."
MIT_Hacker 14y ago
ybombinator'd?
- joshmlewis 14y ago
  Yep. For me as well.
confluence 14y ago
Cached Version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ie=UTF-8&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fflightfox.com%2Fcontest%2F18969 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome...
hahla 14y ago
Wow that's a bummer I would have loved to at least see how far that money stretched (ie. places visited).
- todsul 14y ago
  Hi hahla, please see my post above. We've listed the individual flights and airlines. All the best.
todsul 14y ago
Sorry all, we've put up a cached version on the live site, so it's loading now. We'll also post details of the flights here so you can see how the trip was created.
- laumac 14y ago
  We'll be up again in a minute - just upgrading the box :)
chrisrickard 14y ago
working for me..
thechut 14y ago
I see the page and the prices but their website literally does nothing...
- laumac 14y ago
  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.
  - thechut 14y ago
    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!!
laumac 14y ago
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
- MattRogish 14y ago
  Feature request: be able to see the fare some days after it's "expired", or pay the same bounty and see the fare, too.
  - laumac 14y ago
    Thanks Matt, it's definitely something we're discussing at the moment. Fares can disappear at anytime though.
    - MattRogish 14y ago
      Absolutely, but it's cool to see how folks constructed it :)
    - ashbrahma 14y ago
      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
      - todsul 14y ago
        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.
- ashbrahma 14y ago
jser 14y ago
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/oneworld-explorer/ http://www.oneworld.com/flights/round-the-world-fares/onewor...
- _delirium 14y ago
  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.
- laumac 14y ago
  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).
blhack 14y ago
Why do you require my email address and a place where I was referred to search a flight?
- laumac 14y ago
  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.
actuary 14y ago
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.
- todsul 14y ago
  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.
mliubinskas 14y ago
Love it. It would be great to add premium economy in there too. :-)
science_robot 14y ago
Why would you use a human flight expert instead of an algorithm?
- timaelliott 14y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem
  - science_robot 14y ago
    Yes, exactly. Travelling Salesman with distance being measured in dollars.
    - joezydeco 14y ago
      Need to add one more dimension. Distance is dollars, given a particular day of the year.
- damian2000 14y ago
  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.
- todsul 14y ago
  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.
mayukh 14y ago
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.
- dmix 14y ago
  It's not what their achieving that matters, its how...
- todsul 14y ago
  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.
GodsMoon 14y ago
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.
- laumac 14y ago
  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?
  - kapkapkap 14y ago
    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.
    - todsul 14y ago
      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."
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
  - Alex3917 14y ago
    I'd throw in 5 or 10 bucks to see that.
caseyf 14y ago
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)
- laumac 14y ago
  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.
zwass 14y ago
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.
- todsul 14y ago
  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.
  - zwass 14y ago
    Awesome. I see your point, and am excited to see the results for this one.
anonymoushn 14y ago
Is "View Details" supposed to redirect to the same page?
todsul 14y ago
Here are the winning flight details: This is a 6-Continent RTW itinerary for $1,730. We personally verified that it's a valid itinerary, and at the time of checking, all flights could be booked. JFK 18-Oct-2012 GEO 18-Oct-2012 Delta (New York, US to Georgetown, Guyana) GEO 25-Oct-2012 JFK 25-Oct-2012 Delta (Georgetown, Guyana to New York, US) JFK 14-Nov-2012 TXL 15-Nov-2012 Air Berlin (New York, US to Berlin, Germany) SXF 29-Jan-2013 AGA 29-Jan-2013 EasyJet (Berlin, Germany to Agadir, Morocco) AGA 05-Feb-2013 LGW 05-Feb-2013 EasyJet (Agadir, Morocco to London, UK) LTN 26-Feb-2013 SAW 26-Feb-2013 EasyJet (London, UK to Istanbul, Turkey) SAW 18-Mar-2013 IKA 19-Mar-2013 Pegasus (Istanbul, Turkey to Tehran, Iran) IKA 29-Mar-2013 KUL 30-Mar-2013 AirAsia (Tehran, Iran to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) KUL 02-Apr-2013 PER 02-Apr-2013 AirAsia (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Perth, Australia - YAY!) PER 07-Apr-2013 KUL 07-Apr-2013 AirAsia (Perth, Australia to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) KUL 09-Apr-2013 BKK 09-Apr-2013 AirAsia (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Bangkok, Thailand) BKK 18-Apr-2013 KBP 18-Apr-2013 Aerosvit (Bangkok, Thailand to Kiev, Ukraine) KBP 18-Apr-2013 JFK 18-Apr-2013 Aerosvit (Kiev, Ukraine to New York, US) Any questions, please ask.
- kapkapkap 14y ago
  Could you update that post with city names in addition to the airport codes? I think most of us could recognize ~2 of those at most.
  - todsul 14y ago
    Done, please see above.
  - jerf 14y ago
    todsul beat me to it (good show!), but in the spirit of teaching a person to fish: for airport in JFK GEO TXL SXF AGA LGW LTN SAW IKA KUL PER BKK KBP; do curl "http://airportcode.riobard.com/airport/$airport?fmt=JSON"; echo; sleep 1; done Semicolons are present because I did this in one line, left so you can too. Linebreaks are for HN convenience only. echo is because curl doesn't add linefeeds, sleep 1 is to be polite.
jhuni 14y ago
Is this using an eight content model, including Antarctica, Oceania, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, Australia, and Africa?
- 6ren 14y ago
  I was hoping for the 6 Continent model, which would include Antarctica! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent#Number_of_continents 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 islands
ajays 14y ago
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.....
- todsul 14y ago
  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.
  - ajays 14y ago
    Thanks for the response. It is a neat idea, and I'll try it out soon. I wish you folks all the success!
martindale 14y ago
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.
- todsul 14y ago
  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.
michael991 14y ago
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 http://flightfox.com/referral/16686 Thanks :) Michael
- cvg 14y ago
  cool! How long did it take you to build this routing?
  - michael991 14y ago
    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 :)
- blyuher 14y ago
  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.
  - michael991 14y ago
    I'm new to this site. Are PMs possible? If so, PM me.
    - blyuher 14y ago
      No, PMs are not possible, but my email is bblyuher AT gmail dot com. Thanks!
      - michael991 14y ago
        No problem :) Sent!
geoka9 14y ago
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 :)
- todsul 14y ago
  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.
  - path411 14y ago
    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.
bajsejohannes 14y ago
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)
nachteilig 14y ago
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.

266 points by laumac 14y ago

gmig 14y ago

"Sorry, only the contest owner can view flight details."

MIT_Hacker 14y ago

ybombinator'd?

joshmlewis 14y ago
Yep. For me as well.

confluence 14y ago

Cached Version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ie=UTF-8&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fflightfox.com%2Fcontest%2F18969 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome...

hahla 14y ago

Wow that's a bummer I would have loved to at least see how far that money stretched (ie. places visited).

todsul 14y ago
Hi hahla, please see my post above. We've listed the individual flights and airlines. All the best.

todsul 14y ago

Sorry all, we've put up a cached version on the live site, so it's loading now. We'll also post details of the flights here so you can see how the trip was created.

laumac 14y ago
We'll be up again in a minute - just upgrading the box :)

chrisrickard 14y ago

working for me..

thechut 14y ago

I see the page and the prices but their website literally does nothing...

laumac 14y ago
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.
- thechut 14y ago
  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!!

laumac 14y ago

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

MattRogish 14y ago
Feature request: be able to see the fare some days after it's "expired", or pay the same bounty and see the fare, too.
- laumac 14y ago
  Thanks Matt, it's definitely something we're discussing at the moment. Fares can disappear at anytime though.
  - MattRogish 14y ago
    Absolutely, but it's cool to see how folks constructed it :)
  - ashbrahma 14y ago
    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
    - todsul 14y ago
      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.
ashbrahma 14y ago

jser 14y ago

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/oneworld-explorer/ http://www.oneworld.com/flights/round-the-world-fares/onewor...

_delirium 14y ago
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.
laumac 14y ago
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).

blhack 14y ago

Why do you require my email address and a place where I was referred to search a flight?

laumac 14y ago
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.

actuary 14y ago

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.

todsul 14y ago
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.

mliubinskas 14y ago

Love it. It would be great to add premium economy in there too. :-)

science_robot 14y ago

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

timaelliott 14y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem
- science_robot 14y ago
  Yes, exactly. Travelling Salesman with distance being measured in dollars.
  - joezydeco 14y ago
    Need to add one more dimension. Distance is dollars, given a particular day of the year.
damian2000 14y ago
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.
todsul 14y ago
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.

mayukh 14y ago

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.

dmix 14y ago
It's not what their achieving that matters, its how...
todsul 14y ago
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.

GodsMoon 14y ago

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.

laumac 14y ago
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?
- kapkapkap 14y ago
  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.
  - todsul 14y ago
    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."
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
- Alex3917 14y ago
  I'd throw in 5 or 10 bucks to see that.

caseyf 14y ago

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)

laumac 14y ago
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.

zwass 14y ago

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.

todsul 14y ago
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.
- zwass 14y ago
  Awesome. I see your point, and am excited to see the results for this one.

anonymoushn 14y ago

Is "View Details" supposed to redirect to the same page?

todsul 14y ago

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) SXF 29-Jan-2013 AGA 29-Jan-2013 EasyJet (Berlin, Germany to Agadir, Morocco) AGA 05-Feb-2013 LGW 05-Feb-2013 EasyJet (Agadir, Morocco to London, UK) LTN 26-Feb-2013 SAW 26-Feb-2013 EasyJet (London, UK to Istanbul, Turkey) SAW 18-Mar-2013 IKA 19-Mar-2013 Pegasus (Istanbul, Turkey to Tehran, Iran) IKA 29-Mar-2013 KUL 30-Mar-2013 AirAsia (Tehran, Iran to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) KUL 02-Apr-2013 PER 02-Apr-2013 AirAsia (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Perth, Australia - YAY!) PER 07-Apr-2013 KUL 07-Apr-2013 AirAsia (Perth, Australia to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) KUL 09-Apr-2013 BKK 09-Apr-2013 AirAsia (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Bangkok, Thailand) BKK 18-Apr-2013 KBP 18-Apr-2013 Aerosvit (Bangkok, Thailand to Kiev, Ukraine) KBP 18-Apr-2013 JFK 18-Apr-2013 Aerosvit (Kiev, Ukraine to New York, US) Any questions, please ask.

kapkapkap 14y ago
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 14y ago
  Done, please see above.
- jerf 14y ago
  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 Semicolons are present because I did this in one line, left so you can too. Linebreaks are for HN convenience only. echo is because curl doesn't add linefeeds, sleep 1 is to be polite.

jhuni 14y ago

Is this using an eight content model, including Antarctica, Oceania, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, Australia, and Africa?

6ren 14y ago
I was hoping for the 6 Continent model, which would include Antarctica! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent#Number_of_continents 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 islands

ajays 14y ago

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.....

todsul 14y ago
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.
- ajays 14y ago
  Thanks for the response. It is a neat idea, and I'll try it out soon. I wish you folks all the success!

martindale 14y ago

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.

todsul 14y ago
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.

michael991 14y ago

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 http://flightfox.com/referral/16686 Thanks :) Michael

cvg 14y ago
cool! How long did it take you to build this routing?
- michael991 14y ago
  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 :)
blyuher 14y ago
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.
- michael991 14y ago
  I'm new to this site. Are PMs possible? If so, PM me.
  - blyuher 14y ago
    No, PMs are not possible, but my email is bblyuher AT gmail dot com. Thanks!
    - michael991 14y ago
      No problem :) Sent!

geoka9 14y ago

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 :)

todsul 14y ago
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.
- path411 14y ago
  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.

bajsejohannes 14y ago

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)

nachteilig 14y ago

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.