Hi there, JFC-ers!

It looks like cooling off in our cities' rivers and lakes is a topic we'll be hearing more and more about over the coming years.

The Seine made quite a splash in the run-up to the Paris Olympics this year, as officials battled to ensure that the water was indeed safe to swim in. Meanwhile, London Mayor Sadiq Khan has been working towards making the British capital more swimmable, too, recently publishing a guide to current and future spots to take a dip in the city.

While I may not be rushing to do laps of Glasgow's own River Clyde anytime soon, I'm certainly intrigued by the idea of scheduling in an urban swim on future city breaks. And as it turns out, plenty of cities around the world are already at it! Just don't forget your armbands!

Happy travels and safe swims,

As you know from our recent birthday celebrations, JFC just turned 8 years old. But today, we’re talking about something that happened 7 years ago — Head Flight Finder Tristan joined the team as employee #4! 

Over the years, he has shaped the way Jack’s Flight Club works. From teaching us all what makes a good flight tip, to developing the ways we find them, and even something as small as the font we use to write your emails, he’s been involved in it all. 

That said, all good things must come to an end, and Tristan has decided to move on. In fact, today is his last day at JFC, so I made sure to grab him for a very unofficial exit interview.

Let’s start at the beginning — when did you join Jack’s Flight Club and why?

September 2017. I was already a member, and I saw Jack do an Ask Me Anything on Reddit some months earlier, about four or five months before I joined. And then in one of the emails I saw that they were looking for someone to help with the customer service and flight finding. I thought, “I work in customer service and I would like to work from home, and I really like what Jack's Flight Club is doing,” so I thought I would apply. 

I had to record an excruciating video explaining why I thought I was the right person for the job… But, I got it and apparently, I was! 

Back then, I was working with Jack directly all day, every day. Just passing messages back and forth, with him teaching me things, giving me lots of deal introduction reviews. It was like a really small family in those days.

How has your job changed over the years?

Back then, I was doing a lot of typical managerial stuff. Nowadays, it’s a lot more technical/design/programming stuff! Big picture things. 

I’m really proud of the tools we’ve managed to develop. When you're doing flight finding, there's a lot of repetitive work, scouring Google Flights and comparing fares, unless you have something like our Dealbot to help you. Developing that meant we were able to expand to all the departure airports that we have without exponentially growing the size of the team.

Whenever we have a tech issue and Dealbot isn't working, it can be really annoying for everyone and slows the team down. I kind of think, “I'm sorry, it went down, but also thank you for reminding me how useful it is!” It’s great to have built tools that genuinely help the team. 

I also like that I was able to update the design of the emails. That happened in September 2021. We modernised it quite a bit, got rid of that grey background! And more recently, we changed how the free emails look. I’m proud of that one because it introduces a lot of content and customisation. I’m always really happy if I can improve the member experience, really.

And now onto the tough questions — how many flight tips do you think you’ve sent over the years?

I mean, over a thousand, that's for sure. Because I was the only flight finder other than Jack in 2017 to 2018. If I was sending a deal a day on average, For say three solid years, and a lot of days, I would send, two or three or four. So it's probably over 2000 at this point. Jeez!

I’ve booked a few of those myself, of course. Toronto twice, Vancouver, Tanzania. £10 return to Madrid as well. I’ll have to do more once I’ve left JFC — I’ll still be following the flight tips!

Do you have a favourite deal of all time?

My favourite deal of all time is probably one I mention a lot — it was a Qatar Airways business class airfare to Malaysia and Thailand. And that one always sticks in my memory because I remember the rush I felt after finding it and how excited I was and how quickly I wrote that email.

It was incredible. It was four to five hundred pounds return, roughly. And Qatar's business class! A lot of people managed to book that one, so that was really nice. And the Vueling 2p flights to Vienna, or any time I found somewhere cool in Asia for less than £350. That always made me really, really happy.

Have you learned about anywhere particularly cool over the years?

That's such a difficult one, because there’s been so many. I might have to say, Iceland, where you can dive in a crack between the tectonic plates. These aren't a huge secret any more, I guess, but it’s super cool. 

And there's a lake in Rwanda, Lake Kivu, which is at risk of exploding. It's really high in carbon dioxide and methane, and it could just explode without warning. It's very unlikely to happen, thankfully, but it might.

And then there’s the place in Kenya where there’s a hotel inside a park and the animals are just roaming around. The giraffes will just walk past your hotel room! 

Or basically everything about Namibia, like the Skeleton Coast, which is just covered in carcasses of old ships. There’s some really amazing accommodations you can find there, but they're extraordinarily expensive and only for the richest people, I think. It's a bucket list kind of a thing. Namibia is definitely one of those countries I want to visit as soon as I can.

What are your top five travel tips?

1. Learn to live out of a backpack. Learn the one bag strategy. I know that was popular with our readers, because bag fees are so expensive these days. You can save a lot of money if you can live permanently from a backpack. Especially in a country like Mexico, where laundrettes are super cheap.

2. My favourite Ryanair thing: check in as late as possible, and you're way more likely to get a seat with extra legroom or at the front of the plane. Those are the ones you have to pay for and if everyone else has already got their seat, they have to give you one of those.

3. Always check the OTAs (online travel agencies). Not just because you might save some money, but also because they might include something that the airline wouldn't include usually, like bags.

4. The magic of open-jaw flights would have to be one. If you're spending a lot of the time on your trip going from point A to point B, and then back to point A, you could waste a day or two of your precious holiday doing that. So, if you can just fly home from point B, or, even better, go on a little further to point C, and then fly back home, that's a fantastic option.

5. Just learned to roll with the punches and be open to anything. When I was doing the Trans-European Race, it was kind of like, “I have to get here. I've got a bus, I've got a train, there's this other option that we can go for, this route, or that route…” I just had to keep things flexible, have a spontaneous mindset, and then make the most out of any situation.

So… be optimistic! Nothing can get you down if you have that mindset.

What is the most underrated place that you visited?

You might like my answer for this one. I'm trying to think if there's anything else that might compete with it. Hmm, underrated… No, I think it would have to be Georgia because it's just incredibly beautiful. 

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