For those of you out there concerned about the travel costs to Hawaii, I’m hear to tell you that you can get round trip tickets from the East Coast all the way to our beautiful island paradise for around $500/per person.
Cross county flights into LA, Oakland, SFO and Las Vegas routinely run $99 - $129 each way/per person. West coast to Hawaii connections run $119 -$149. These are valid fares available pretty much daily on major carriers, most with only 2-week advance purchase requirements.
Check out fares from ATA, Aloha airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, Spirit, Frontier, America West and Jet Blue. Fares in and out of Oakland on ATA are DIRT cheap.
If your Team’s Travel Coordinator is not afraid to go after the begging, whining and always effective crying discount, I’m sure they can get additional “concessions” and knock the price down some more. This of course, leaves more funds available for your team to island hop at $29/per person each way.
Wowzers… thanks for the info. Err… um… does anyone know any good websites for airfare? I can’t think of any of the companies in the commercials off of the top of my head.
Good job on selling the Hawaii Regional. I’m sure teams like 234, 233, and 25 would definitely consider this regional since they’ve travelled all over the US in recent years.
Any way of getting some advance information of where it would be held, or at least which airport to fly into and what dates?? (In talking with some of my team this past Friday night, we came across the idea that we would love it if Hawaii and Las Vegas were back to back regionals and hit up both in one long extended vacation trip. How cool would that be?)
MY team is among all the others who wish to make Hawaii a reality, and if not I would like to go myself and volunteer with some folks at least.
Either way, I want to make it out there and cross off Hawaii from my “places to visit” list one of these days,and why not during a FIRST event?
And also remember that the earlier that you make the reservations for the flights and hotel rooms and stuff the cheaper that it will be.
Also look into smaller airports like local non international ones sometimes you can get better air fares as long as you don’t mind 1-3 layovers before reaching your final destination.
A quick glance at Farecast (www.farecast.com) shows that fares aren’t available yet for March, 2008.
www.sidestep.com is another reasonable site for checking airfares, as is www.qixo.com. Both will query multiple other websites at a time, including the airlines’ own sites.
Hawai’i inaugural FIRST Robotics Regional will be held March 27-29, 2008 at the University of Hawai’i Manoa’s Stan Sheriff Center. University of Hawai’i Manoa is on the island of Oahu near the downtown area in Hononlulu.
Honolulu International = HNL
If you’re only planning on visiting any of the other islands (hint, hint). Then you’ll want to check out these airports. Fares from Aloha Airlines, Hawaiian airlines and Go! are currently running $19/each way and up. Go’s website is iflygo.com.
Lihue, Kauai pronounced Lee Who Aye = LIH
Kailua Kona, Hawaii pronounced Kai Lou Ah Cone Ah (western side of The Big Island) = KOA
Hilo, Hawaii pronounced He Low ( eastern side of The Big Island, and best place on all the islands to visit) = ITO
Kahului, Maui pronounced Kah Who Lou E= OGG
There is that possibility for any regional or even the Championship event. But I think that *FIRST *will be handling this regional with a little better care then the rest for 2008 because of its location and the buzz surrounding it. I think that there might be a increased fee for shipping for the teams that plan to attend this regional because it will cost more to ship it but maybe I will be wrong.
My personal favorite is kayak.com. It basically searches a bunch of airlines websites as well as Orbitz, Travelocity, etc. It doesn’t actually sell the tickets, but instead links you to the cheapest place to buy the flight you want. There are also useful tools to play with to narrow or broaden your search as you see fit. By creating a login, you can have it email you when a given trip drops below a certain price, which could be useful when say; you want to book a flight to Hawaii when the price is below $400. It obviously doesn’t include all airlines and websites out there, but I have been satisfied every time I use it.
Back-to-back regionals involve expedited shipping charges as is. I would make sure teams ask FIRST to clarify before registering and to be clear on what the extra charges will be.
It’s probably going to be quite a bit. We were looking at over $2000 for back to back regional shipping from Ypsilanti, MI to San Jose, CA when we were registered for GLR this year, and Michigan isn’t an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
We plan on doing a fantastic regional for all those coming over to Hawaii. We hope to have an ambassador for each team to show them around and there have been lots of neat idea’s for the team social. I liked the Luau idea but that could get pricey if everyone brings their aunts and uncles too. be sure to check out the robotics website :http://robotics.hawaii.gov/
We should have updates and help for those planning on coming over! My only advise is to register EARLY!!!
