5 ms·

Has anyone here used flight fox? Did you get results that made it worth it? To me it is interesting to see whether the NP hard routing and the incomplete data

by robryan 14y ago

Has anyone here used flight fox? Did you get results that made it worth it? To me it is interesting to see whether the NP hard routing and the incomplete data of online flight search tools create a big enough gap for it to be economical to pay someone to do it,

todsul 14y ago
Hey robryan, using humans vs doing-it-yourself isn't just a case of incomplete data or algorithm inefficiency. Rather, it's about the service a real human can provide. The same reason many people still use travel agents for complex flights. The most obvious example is using frequent flyer miles. It's one thing to find an award flight on your favorite airline, but much more difficult to search all available partner awards. Once we get into FF territory, there are also mileage runs and segment runs. In most of these cases you have to spend many hours yourself, which is why we built flightfox. In short, Flightfox works best for more complex requests. We've seen amazing results with short flights, but it's not the focus and isn't a given.
russjhammond 14y ago
I used them for a trip this past weekend just to get from CLT-PHL, a route I thought I knew every trick to flying. They saved me between $75-$100 for that simple flight.
- mtr 14y ago
  Interesting. Any more details about how they were able to do this?
  - chrisrickard 14y ago
    I have a bit of experience with this. Flight "hackers" use a number of varying techniques. As simple as using low-cost airlines that are not registered with the main services, to very crafty means to circumvent fuel surcharges. travel and flight hacking is a very interesting world!
    - _casperc 14y ago
      Is there any information about this that you can point to? I'd be interested to read up on this.
  - russjhammond 14y ago
    One trick they used which I know well is booking one leg of the flight to a ghost or hidden city. For example my outbound flight was CLT>PHL>LGA. Not always the case but there are certain routes where it is cheaper to add a 2nd leg on. So in this case I booked that leg but just didn't take the flight from PHL>LGA. Incidentally this trick only works if you are carrying on your bag and you are on a one way flight. If you did this on a round trip on your outbound flight the airline will cancel the rest of your ticket. What impressed me though is that they found a flight that I could not find on the airline's website. I don't know if it was a code share flight with some other airline but I looked all over USair's site for the flight I bought from some random discount site and could not find it.
siganakis 14y ago
I used it for a complicated round the world itinerary. My first competition didn't get any takers ending with no flights, but I contacted support and they re-ran it and I got about 8 different itineraries - all cheaper than expected. Funnily, there was $1000 to be saved by flying from Melbourne to St Lucia (Carribean) via London (~15,000 miles) rather than via LA (~11,000 miles). That made no sense to me at all!
- cjrp 14y ago
  More airlines competing on the longer route = lower prices?

by robryan 14y ago

todsul 14y ago

Hey robryan, using humans vs doing-it-yourself isn't just a case of incomplete data or algorithm inefficiency. Rather, it's about the service a real human can provide. The same reason many people still use travel agents for complex flights. The most obvious example is using frequent flyer miles. It's one thing to find an award flight on your favorite airline, but much more difficult to search all available partner awards. Once we get into FF territory, there are also mileage runs and segment runs. In most of these cases you have to spend many hours yourself, which is why we built flightfox. In short, Flightfox works best for more complex requests. We've seen amazing results with short flights, but it's not the focus and isn't a given.

russjhammond 14y ago

I used them for a trip this past weekend just to get from CLT-PHL, a route I thought I knew every trick to flying. They saved me between $75-$100 for that simple flight.

mtr 14y ago
Interesting. Any more details about how they were able to do this?
- chrisrickard 14y ago
  I have a bit of experience with this. Flight "hackers" use a number of varying techniques. As simple as using low-cost airlines that are not registered with the main services, to very crafty means to circumvent fuel surcharges. travel and flight hacking is a very interesting world!
  - _casperc 14y ago
    Is there any information about this that you can point to? I'd be interested to read up on this.
- russjhammond 14y ago
  One trick they used which I know well is booking one leg of the flight to a ghost or hidden city. For example my outbound flight was CLT>PHL>LGA. Not always the case but there are certain routes where it is cheaper to add a 2nd leg on. So in this case I booked that leg but just didn't take the flight from PHL>LGA. Incidentally this trick only works if you are carrying on your bag and you are on a one way flight. If you did this on a round trip on your outbound flight the airline will cancel the rest of your ticket. What impressed me though is that they found a flight that I could not find on the airline's website. I don't know if it was a code share flight with some other airline but I looked all over USair's site for the flight I bought from some random discount site and could not find it.

siganakis 14y ago

I used it for a complicated round the world itinerary. My first competition didn't get any takers ending with no flights, but I contacted support and they re-ran it and I got about 8 different itineraries - all cheaper than expected. Funnily, there was $1000 to be saved by flying from Melbourne to St Lucia (Carribean) via London (~15,000 miles) rather than via LA (~11,000 miles). That made no sense to me at all!

cjrp 14y ago
More airlines competing on the longer route = lower prices?