In the fall of 2025, Sam Khattak was trying to book a flight to his native Pakistan, only to be irritated by the various pop-ups, up-sells, and bothersome distractions that come with using the big travel aggregators.
“Every time I’d go to a site, they’d send a bunch of things like, ‘Buy this, buy that.’ I don’t want that - I just need a ticket,” said the George Mason University alum (BS, Criminology, Law, and Society, ’18; MS Applied Information Technology, ’22). So, like any entrepreneur, Khattak set out to create a solution the market didn’t offer: an uncluttered, user-friendly site that makes it easy to find flights with zero ads.
FlyToDash launched in November, 2025, and the brand is growing. Khattak said in January he had 400 users, stretching from the U.S. to England to Australia and he’s getting traffic from Bing, Google, and even ChatGPT (among other search engines), all organically.
With no background in the travel industry, Khattak started at ground zero, so to speak, and the finding flight information to populate the site was the biggest challenge. “Once I found that source, I realized that getting a domain and creating a site was easy,” he said. As a bonus, the flight data provider he found had recently moved to a fee-free structure, requiring no upfront investment.
Just as on better-known sites, at FlyToDash users enter dates, airports, and other information to find flight options. The platform offers a built-in travel chatbot that helps users compare routes, find cheaper flights, and get quick travel guidance. But unlike the major sites, FlyToDash was built with a user-first approach, removing ads and upselling in favor of a cleaner, more transparent experience. Khattak frankly says he may never see profits at an appreciable level, and he’s okay with that. “I mean, I invested $33 on the domain name. That’s like two trips to Chipotle,” he said with a laugh.
And this focus makes his site better than bigger competitors, he said. “I don’t want to send you stuff you’re not looking for. If you wanted insurance, you’d search for insurance. My goal is to make searching flights simple.” He is also proud of the information’s transparency. “The results will tell you things like, this one allows for one bag, this one allows for two, or this one needs visa approval.”
The site features a blog, which Khattak writes himself, including helpful titles such as, “IAD vs DCA vs BWI – Which DC Airport is Best in 2026?,” a page for travel tips, and a special page for deals.
He’s a company of one, but his background in data science, user experience, and information technology gave him most of the skills he needed to build and maintain the site. He said his time at George Mason was important in learning the tools he needed for his day job, at LMI, a Tysons-based firm, and for FlyToDash. “When I was doing my masters, I had a lot of ideas about opening my own business someday. I learned everything at Mason and now I’m implementing it in real life. I work with people from schools like Harvard and Cornell and I’ve learned that it’s not about where you go to school, it's about what you learn in school. I'm very proud to have been to Mason and I always tell people that.”
In a crowded travel market, this Patriot is demonstrating that a smooth takeoff starts with fewer distractions on the runway.