Behind the scenes with Head Flight Finder Tristan on his last day at Jack's Flight Club
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.
Obviously, it was quite different when you started. And then we grew! What was the turning point?
I think it must have been the second half of 2018 up until the end of 2019. The company really exploded at that point, we went from 100K members to 1m+! And tons of people joined the company in that time as well, there were so many gaps to fill. That’s when I started officially managing the flight finding team.
It's only been five or six years since the team really grew, but it feels like a lifetime ago at this point. Tons of people have been here for ages now. Danni (Head of Social Media) joined a few months after me, Genora and Andreia (Flight Finders) are both approaching their 5th anniversary.
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?
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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. When I was there, there were so few tourists. There were some, but it was nothing like as full as any big European city I've been to, anyway.
Tristan taking a nap on a cliff in Gudauri
An example of something I found really cool was the stairways that they have in the houses, and this concept of community and mix of cultures. And then the countryside is just amazing. Seeing the prehistoric caves. The views in the Caucasus, of course, and I didn't even get a chance to do some of the hikes in the west of the country, which looked really, really cool.
And it's super cheap. The only slightly painful part is that it's kind of a bit more expensive to fly to than other spots in that area.
If I was gonna do a runner-up, it’d be Novi Sad in Serbia. That's an easy one. I mean, it's not somewhere you would go out of your way to visit as a Western European person. But if you're going to Serbia anyway, or you're in that region and looking for a stopover, I recommend Novi Sad. It's lovely.
There are some really beautiful buildings there. It's a small place where, to my understanding, Serbians go as a weekend getaway. There was this memorable moment where we went to get some sandwiches from a lady that just runs this sandwich place, kind of hole in the wall type thing that stays open late. She was such a character, and it was really fun ordering from her with her broken English.
And the atmosphere in the city was really, really nice in general. People out eating and drinking really late into the night. I think we finally got there and left the hotel around midnight, and there were still tables everywhere, the middle of the street full of people socialising. The people also seemed really happy that we visited, they were kind of surprised to see us, but they were happily surprised.
Now for a few quick-fire questions…
Window or aisle seat? Window
Is it okay to take your shoes off on a plane? Always! Everyone does it that I can tell, and it's just not comfortable to keep them on. I have super comfy travel shoes and my feet still get uncomfortable on a long plane journey. So yeah, absolutely. Unless your feet smell, in which case, it's never acceptable.
Top travel hack? Take an insulated water bottle. Especially for hard hikes and hot countries, having ice-cold water is worth it.
How many countries have you been to? Doing some quick maths, I’d say it’s around 25.
What was your silliest travel mistake?
Probably not keeping my passport on me when I was going into the border crossing into Serbia. I left it in my bag, which was in the trailer attached to the bus, instead of on my person.
Or recently, I missed two flights just because I didn't check in at the right time. It has to be more than three hours before, or more than one hour before at the airport. And for whatever stupid reason in my head, I didn't do it, and then I got stung buying new flights for much more money. I did that twice in a week — it wasn’t great.
Oh, and one time, I just booked the flight for the wrong month, and then I didn't realize until I got to the airport. Then there’s machine washing my passport two weeks before I was gonna go do the Trans-European Race. Good one.
Wow, so even a pro traveller can have made a few mistakes in their time! Okay, now onto the final question… What will you miss most about working at Jack's Flight Club?
It's hard to say anything other than the people that work here. Especially the people who I have had the opportunity to see go from their first day here to where they are now, see how they've developed. Getting to see that process and then have my very small amount of influence on it is always the best part of the job for me and the most rewarding for sure.
