Talk:Local information/Transportation

Charter a plane

At a wikimeetup yesterday, we talked about how to get to Haifa. We came up with an idea which perhaps not is feasible, but perhaps it is. How about to charter a flight from some large airport in Euroe (eg. Frankfurt)? We would probably need around 200 passengers to do that, but we thought that number would be a realistic projection of how many needing to change planes somewhere in Europe. We could then have an all-wikimedian plane to Israel which would be really cool and might make other logistics easier too. --Ainali 09:11, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the creative suggestion. We don't have experience with how much such an option would cost, but I'm somewhat doubtful it would save considerable costs. People will still need to travel to Frankfurt, and people have different dates they want to arrive and depart etc. There are direct flights to Tel Aviv from many locations in Europe (some are not even listed on that page, because they're served only by seasonal low-cost carriers such as Tuifly or Airberlin). We have so much other logistics to take care of that I'm not sure this is first priority :) What might be more feasible is for groups of, say, 15-20 Wikimedians from the same country to try buy a group ticket through one airline on the same flight. This might allow some discount. Harel 09:21, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I would guess most of the participants would be quite flexible if they would get a flight from central Europe for less than 300EUR oneway. I googled a bit around and it seems that the break even point is somewhere around 100 persons to make a charter economically feasable. There are direct flights from a lot of spots, e.g. Stockholm, but they are quite expensive. For cheaper flights one has to change once anyway, and there I don't care much where. And then there are the people not coming from europe at all, they probably have to change somewhere, too.

I think it would be worth to ask how many people are needed in order to get a price of 200 EUR oneway, e.g. Tuifly has a standard form for chartering a whole plane (https://www.tuifly.com/BookCharter.aspx?culture=en-US) so it shouldn't be to much effort to get some number. --Prolineserver 10:06, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, that was helpful! As for people from outside of Europe, there are direct flights to TLV from New York, Los Angeles, Bangkok, Beijing, Bombay, Johannesburg, Sao Paolo, Hong Kong and others. So not everyone has to go through Europe. What direct flights are there from Sweden? I don't know of any nowadays. Harel 10:24, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Bus to the dorms

Hi,

I'm missing the bus to the dorms here (the arranged one) - I understood there will be only one a day (aside regular bus services, which is zero on friday evening/saturday) so it would be helpful what to expect and what times to take into account... Thanks, Lodewijk 11:42, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Actually, Haifa is one of the lucky places that does have public transportation on Fridays and Saturdays. I'll add detailed info soon. Thanks for this reminder. --Amir E. Aharoni 11:48, 10 June 2011 (UTC)