Channel 4: 5 Minutes To A Fortune. Were The Couple Cheated Out Of £4I.888

[mickthemuppe]

In the final today the question asked was -Cities with the Busiest Airports.- The contestant needed to name 5 out of the top ten. She got four which were Paris, London, Chicago, Beijing. She had already said New York which was deemed to be a wrong answer . Now as New York has 3 main airports which had a 110 million passengers last year how could that not be in the top ten. So the money drifted away and they got nothing. Is I was a contestant in this Game show and that answer were disallowed I think I would be suing them in a court of law.

[puzzled54]

Actually, I didn't hear her say New York - cos Mr Puzz was shouting New York at her.

[crisgal]

I took it to mean the top ten busiests airports, singular. I felt very sorry for her. She did well toget four!

[Mamyalynne]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_busiest_airports_by_passenger_traffic

[mickthemuppe]

Crisgal the question was cities and airports both in the plural. The question was very badly set as it could have meant flights and not passengers. but when you are playing around with £50,000 you think they could get the question right.

[ichkeria]

The wikipedia link quoted by Mamyalynne would suggest that New York is incorrect, however.

[mickthemuppe]

Please refer to my first posting. Nowhere are their more passengers than New York with three of the main airports in the world.. The question said Airports not airport

[Birdfeeder]

does any one know who took the lead parts in Mamma Mia when Lesley Nicol played Rosie

[scottwoodsc]

Hi OP, a friend of mine pointed this discussion out to me so I thought I'd dive in and respond.

My girlfriend and I were the contestants on the show you mentioned and believe it or not we have actually brought the question and its answers to the attention of the production company, although for a slightly different reason. We had a great time on the show and naturally felt gutted to have gone home with nothing but had happily accepted it until we discovered a problem with the question and the answers given.

I can understand the point you are trying to make that when the passenger figures for all of New York's airports are combined it would be one of the 'cities with the busiest airports' but I think basically what the question was asking us to do is 'think of the 10 individual airports with the highest passenger numbers and then name the city that they are in' (although this is not made 100% clear)
There are also different top 10's that they could have considered as you said: passenger traffic, cargo traffic and traffic movements.

Our dispute is with the figures used for the top 10. On the show, the top 10 tied in with the Airports Council International figures for the 'world's busiest airports by passenger traffic' for the year 2010. However, the most recent final figures were published in August 2012 and cover the 2011 period. In that top 10, Denver is demoted and Hong Kong moves up into 10th place. Carlyn said Hong Kong fairly early on and would have given five correct answers (based upon the most recently available figures) by the £41k mark, as you said.

We've been in touch with Victory TV and they are having their question verifiers look into it over the weekend, so who knows how they will respond. Anyways, I hope this gives you some insight into what's going on. I think at the end of the day, the researchers have slipped up somewhat and it has cost us a significant amount of money. Hopefully by bringing this to their attention it will help them avoid using an ambiguous question like this in future shows :)