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.....
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.
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.....