Has anybody had any success in getting an Airline to sponsor your team? (ex. discounted or free tickets) I’m just wondering to see it it was worth my time to try.
we get discounted tickets from delta…but i think its only cuz were buying tickets in bulk
I think that FIRST should have an official airline…like how TV shows and such have their own official airline. Good publicity for the airline to be envolved in such a valuable and worthwhile program and cheap tickets for FIRSTers. Just an idea.
~Angela who’s never had to worry about plane travel for FIRST
Yes, yes we did. Two years ago Hawaiian Airlines sponsored us and offered to deliver our robot to the site of the competition.
*Originally posted by littlefish180 *
**I think that FIRST should have an official airline…like how TV shows and such have their own official airline. Good publicity for the airline to be envolved in such a valuable and worthwhile program and cheap tickets for FIRSTers. Just an idea.~Angela who’s never had to worry about plane travel for FIRST **
Of course that implies that an airline would be interested. 
Othewrise I think I’m going to make a pitiful attempt at getting JetBlue to sponsor us with tickets in some fashion. JetBlue is a year-old discount airline that flies out of random cities including Orlando and all of the cities in Upstate NY. I don’t know why they choose all the cities in Upstate NY, I just know that means I can fly on them easily.
Matt
Hey There!!
So my team, number 192, hasn’t yet actively pursued a full sponsorship from an airline, however we have been able to get some discount. This year I am going to actively pursue a full sponsorship, as in not paying, because United uses San Francisco as one of its hubs. I’ll keep you up to date okay? Cheers.
Matt Sorgenfrei
After attending the Chief Delphi Invitiational last year, I learned a lot from a break-out session about getting tickets early and how to deal with the airlines. We bought our tickets in December and got a great deal to go from Indiana to Texas on Continental. Your team leader needs to get those tickets early! As for our robot, as sponsorship, we get free shipping anywhere from BAX Global. They even did an article on us last year and put it in their quarterly magazine that goes out literally around the world! They’ve been great.
I’ve tried to hit airlines for all different types of sponsorship and so far, no luck.
(And David, this is post #3!) 
Do you know what processes were involved in getting Hawaiian to sponsor you guys?
Wow what a necro*. Anne hasn’t been on Chief Delphi since 2010 so I wouldn’t hold your breath for a response. If you’re really interested in getting sponsored by an airline, you should probably ask a more general question (not just directed to one person) in a new thread to get more people to respond.
*If a thread has been dead for a long time, we try to start a new thread instead of reviving the old one. Reviving an old thread is called necro-ing (or necroposting)
865’s sponsored by Porter. We were given some tickets which we raffled off.
Southwest did sponsor the FIRST Championship. I’m not sure what the arrangement was (money or flights for staff or something else) but that partnership does exist to some extent.
I know once facet of the sponsorship was the deans list winner award sponsoring their flights to FIRST HQ and I believe also giving them a flight voucher.
I work for SWA and it’s pretty useless to try and get money from the company for team sponsorship. We have a halloween party every year and my team built a halloween themed robot but that really didn’t help my case for securing money at all. I believe one Dallas area team is sponsored financially but it’s not really an official program, I think their mentor’s department is large and secured the budget for department philanthropy.
However, if you’re located near a major SWA airport or in Dallas and can find mentors you can get up to 6 free round trip tickets for every 40 hours mentored by SWA employees.