Extremely interesting.....a few questions that come to mind for me:
1. Is it worthwhile using for simple flights? Ie: Toronto to las Vegas, direct?
2. Can it handle extremely complex (maybe even almost freeform) scenarios beyond the displayed +\- x days, such as: I have 14 days available (but would settle for an 11 day trip), and I can take travel any time between these dates, and I am willing to travel to a, b, or c - what are my options? (This is getting into the realm of travel agent services....for which I would gladly pay, assuming one might actually be able to find a competent one through this site).
3. Does the service tend to work much less well in Canada compared to the US?
4. Is it conceivable that if this service is successful enough (market penetration wise), that some of the optimizations used may start to disappear, or affect pricing from airlines?
5. Any plans of extending it to vacations (flight, hotel, all-inclusive)?
6. You mention frequent flyer plans on the site - for a person who has no clue, any (long term) plans for offering sign up for those types of things integrated with your service?
7. Are you running some customized search tools in house, or does each person fulfilling contests just using their own secret tips and tricks?
Good luck on this, truly one of the most interesting initiatives I've heard of in a very long time!
1. Depends on your expectations. If the absolute lowest price is found on Kayak.com, then that's the price you'll get. We can't change that, but we can save you lots of time by making sure that's the lowest price. Of course, we do save a lot of people money on short trips, but the longer the better.
2. Yes, absolutely. Just describe your requirements in the comments section and make sure you work with the experts to keep them on the right track. This is really where we can save the most for you.
3. No, not at all. This is a global service. It works best when you're flying to lesser know places because our experts may have local knowledge that helps get better prices than you know.
4. Only a very small percentage of winning flights use loopholes. But yes, they can and do disappear. Luckily, because we're "human-powered" and because these loopholes are discovered by humans, it's more likely you'll get access to loophole savings on Flightfox.
5. Yes, maybe, probably, not sure :)
6. We need to reach critical mass to really leverage the power of frequent flyer points. We'll get there soon :)
7. At this stage, it's all human powered. We're only a few weeks old, so we hope to evolve. Some of our experts claim to use custom software. There are definitely lots of manual tricks and tips too.
1. Is it worthwhile using for simple flights? Ie: Toronto to las Vegas, direct?
2. Can it handle extremely complex (maybe even almost freeform) scenarios beyond the displayed +\- x days, such as: I have 14 days available (but would settle for an 11 day trip), and I can take travel any time between these dates, and I am willing to travel to a, b, or c - what are my options? (This is getting into the realm of travel agent services....for which I would gladly pay, assuming one might actually be able to find a competent one through this site).
3. Does the service tend to work much less well in Canada compared to the US?
4. Is it conceivable that if this service is successful enough (market penetration wise), that some of the optimizations used may start to disappear, or affect pricing from airlines?
5. Any plans of extending it to vacations (flight, hotel, all-inclusive)?
6. You mention frequent flyer plans on the site - for a person who has no clue, any (long term) plans for offering sign up for those types of things integrated with your service?
7. Are you running some customized search tools in house, or does each person fulfilling contests just using their own secret tips and tricks?
Good luck on this, truly one of the most interesting initiatives I've heard of in a very long time!