FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - PIT to TLV Guidance, Please
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Old Feb 9, 2014, 9:24 pm
  #9  
Adam1222
 
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Washington, DC
Programs: DL PM; IHG PlatAmb; Hilton Dia; Marriott Plat; Hyatt Discoverist
Posts: 7,341
Any flight to Israel on a partner airline, booked using US Airways miles, will cost 120,000 roundtrip if any leg is in business. See https://www.usairways.com/pv_obj_cac...wardtravel.pdf. If you are flying on US Airways - on its one flight to TLV- , there are three separate prices, high (350k), medium (225k), and low (120k)

You are booking very late for travel this June to Israel. Hence, you are only likely to find availability on the one US Airways flight - from Philadelphia to Tel Aviv - in business class except at US Airways "high" level. (The seats on this plane in Envoy class are lie-flat and definitely not the same as domestic first). Same goes for the nonstop EWR-TLV on United, and the YYZ-TLV on Air Canada. I am not seeing award availability on any date in June on any of these two flights.

(To give you an idea, I booked my June Israel award travel in October and these flights were all already sold out for dates that worked for us.)

You can possibly find travel on Star Alliance partners, connecting in Europe, but even that is going to be slim pickings at this late date - particularly if you are hoping to find more than one seat on each flight.


My recommendation would be trying to find a way from Pittsburgh to Zurich, Frankfurt, Munich, Athens, Berlin, Brussels, Warsaw, Copenhagen, Vienna, or Istanbul, and then on to Tel Aviv. You may need to spend a night in Europe somewhere en route, and/or do the shorter leg in coach.

Note: waiting until after March to book on Oneworld would be very foolish. The availability will go down even farther, and Star Alliance has much more options into TLV (AA doesn't fly to TLV, and British Airways awards have high fuel surcharges.)

Also, you cannot book partner award travel on the US Airways website, so disregard anyone who is telling you to do so.

You may get better info in the US Airways forum, as many people here seem to be rampantly speculating.

Good luck

Last edited by Adam1222; Feb 9, 2014 at 9:32 pm
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