Originally Posted by
Bretteee
AAJFK:
You can fly AA / BA to TLV with no problem. I loved it when TLV was considered to be in EUROPE; LOL. You could fly to TLV from the USA for only 40,000 miles between Oct 15 and May 15. That was the biggest bargain in the sky.
Then when EL AL hooked up they spoilt it by reminding AA that Israel was in the Middle East.
You still can do it for a cheap. The way to do it is to fly to the farthest destination AA considers to be
Europe on an award ticket and then book cheap a roundtrip ticket from there to TLV.
Remember, "Europe" can span anywhere between the Canary Islands off the coast of Western Sahara all the way to Azerbaijan on the Caspian Sea. A little knowledge in geography and a world map will help you in finding out the farthest distance you can go that fits under the "Europe" definition and the closest one to Israel.
For example, AA considers Turkey and Cyprus to be under Europe ^. Therefore, one can still book an award ticket all the way from the US to IST for 40k miles during off peak season. Then all you have to do is to buy a cheap roundtrip IST-TLV ticket on El Al (and earn AA miles while you're at it). Or, you can book an award ticket to LCA and buy a cheap LCA-TLV roundtrip on Cyprus Airways.
, book an award ticket to ATH and buy your own ATH-TLV, etc. etc. And while you're at it, you can stick in a mini-vacation to those cities and countries in conjunction with a trip to TLV
