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.
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.