[todsul]

And here are some of the details of the business class itinerary for $3,630. Keep in mind that a similar itinerary from the same expert came in at $2569. That itinerary didn't win because we couldn't verify it online. The expert suggested it required a quick phone call.

   Los Angeles LAX to Sydney SYD
   Sydney SYD to Bangkok BKK
   Bangkok BKK to XXX
   XXX to XXX
   XXX to Cairo CAI
   Cairo CAI to London LHR
   London LHR to XXX
   XXX to Bogota BOG
   Bogota BOG to XXX
   XXX to Los Angeles LAX

Apologies for the missing details, but these details are the experts' secret sauce. If you actually want to take a trip like this, let us know and we can hold a content for you and make sure the best experts know about it.

[corin_]

Not personally interested in that deal, but wondering: what would it take to get that trip. Could create a contest, but would it need paying more than the minimum fee to get that same deal? Do some experts not get out of bed for less than $x?

[todsul]

To get the business class itinerary, it would take a significant finder's fee. If you are seriously interested in an itinerary like this, please email us, team at flightfox.com and we'll work directly with you. Like we mentioned in the post, this would be an unforgettable trip without a doubt.

[rdl]

What is "significant"? $100? $500?

[brk]

So who are these "experts"? Travel agents? What is the motivation to them to keep certain details secret?

[_delirium]

Not sure if it applies to this particular one, but there are a lot of pricing quirks in international, multi-airline itineraries that one can exploit: airline fare rules are fairly complex lists of requirements/exclusion/combination/stopover rules etc., and the combinatorial complexity and ancient IT infrastructure it's all coded in sometimes produces results the airlines might not have intended had they realized it. Particularly lucrative combinations tend to get shut down once airlines notice them, so there's sort of an ethos of not talking about them openly in public. One exploit that was going around for a while, for example, was that certain combinations of cities/airlines would result in the fuel surcharge not showing up on a fare like you'd expect it to ("fuel dumping"); you could sometimes purposely add weird legs to make that situation come about, but weren't supposed to publicly post such a leg if you found one, lest it go away.

[todsul]

Hi _delerium, just for the record, these RTW itineraries do not contain fuel dumps. The prices have mostly come about from intelligent routing, which you rightly suggest is the work of humans better recognizing efficient combinations than websites using existing rigid algorithms and limited data sets.

We built Flightfox after living across 6 continents and learning this for ourselves. Often we'd save thousands just by spending a few hours on routing. Like most people who travel wide when they're young, the costs of flights became a primary expense. But even after we'd traveled for a while, it didn't get easier because for the most part, local knowledge is what makes the difference. Always traveling somewhere new meant we were always starting from scratch. Then it hit us... crowdsourcing.

[joshAg]

how long is the trip from LA to LA, how much would the finder's fee be, on each continent and could it be made to include at least a stop of 48 contiguous hours?