Libya Getting There & Away

Getting There & Away

By plane Tripoli is served by most major European and Arab airlines and of course by Libyan Airlines which uses the airport as its main hub. Essentially one may expect daily flights to the major regional airports such as Heathrow, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Rome, Cairo and multiple flights per week to Milan, Manchester, Vienna, Alexandria, etc. A new private Libyan airline, Afriqiyah, provides services to many European and African cities with Tripoli as a hub. It uses new Airbus aircraft and seems to be expanding its route map rapidly. Another new private Libyan airline, Buraq, provides domestic services as well as some limited international flights (example to Istanbul). It should be noted that some of Buraq's fleet (though not all of it) recently appeared on a list of unsafe airlines published by the EU. There are also some international routes between Libya's second city Benghazi to destinations such as Alexandria and Cairo (according to the LAA website London and Casablanca are planned from Benghazi). These tend to be more seasonal and one should check schedules ahead of time. Of course there are many direct flights from places such as Amsterdam to small oasis towns in the middle of the Sahara but these are operated by the oil companies for private purposes (i.e. to ferry the foreign oil workers directly to the oil fields). By train Libya has no international train connections and no significant domestic train infrastructure. By car One may travel to Libya overland. There are bus and "shared taxi" (accommodating 6 people in a station wagon) services from such places as Tunis, Alexandria, Cairo, Djerba, etc. There are many online blogs showing people having done the trip in their own 4x4s or using their own dirt bikes, campervans, etc. It would seem that they encounter quite some difficulty at the border (1-2 days to clear paperwork type problem) but considerable hospitality once in the country. By bus There are bus services to both Tunisia and Egypt.