What it looks like
Airport transfers on the example plan
from the example plan- Transfers, both ends, every flight leg
- +$100 to +$272 per person
- Time spent getting to and from airports
- 9h 40m across the trip
- Airports with no transfer data
- None on this plan
- As a share of the $1,210 fare
- 8% to 22%
Up to $272 and more than a working day, on a trip whose entire airfare is $1,210. That is the argument for letting the optimizer see it: an airport ninety minutes from town is not the cheap option it looks like on a fare grid.
When it does not work
- Public-transport bands assume public transport. Four people with luggage at 6am are taking a taxi, and the taxi is not in the band.
- About eighty airports are covered. Anything else adds nothing and is listed as unknown rather than assumed free.
- Transfer times are typical, not worst case. Engineering works, strikes and overnight gaps in service are not modelled.
- It is a per-person cost that does not scale like one: a taxi split four ways behaves very differently from four train tickets.
- The hours matter as much as the dollars, and only you can price your own time.
Risk
No risk
One booking, normal rules. Nothing here can be taken away from you.