The Cheapest Route to 6 Continents

    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.

  Sunday:    1
  Monday:    1
  Tuesday:   5
  Wednesday: 1
  Thursday:  3
  Friday:    1
  Saturday:  0

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

  - 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

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.