Hello and thank you in advance for all the sage wisdom and advice. A relative put me out to her neighbor as an expert in credit cards/FF miles. Oh well, bad for me.

The neighbor would like to travel non-stop to Tel Aviv. We live in Baltimore, so the only options are PHL (USAir), EWR (El Al, United), JFK (El Al, Delta). From what I can tell from an itasoftware search, El Al doesn't fly on certain days (guessing Shabbat).

The neighbors have no points and are willing to get a credit card. They are husband and wife and he has a business. I'm guessing they could each get a personal card and he could get a business card as well.

It seems to be very difficult to manage because I don't think they'll have enough points for everyone to fly for free (I'm verifying the # of passengers, but I think it is 5), so while you can get a free ticket or two on Airline A, if their flight is more expensive in terms of dollars, that may offset the free ticket. What I mean is that you don't necessarily want to get a free ticket if the rest of the family has to pay double just to fly on the same plane. I hope this makes sense.

From my recent experience, Chase points are easy to get (Sapphire Preferred and Ink Bold). You can combine those with even a United Card. I don't know about El Al. I know that Delta has a reasonable flight out of JFK, but I think the only way to book on Delta using Ultimate Rewards points is to transfer them to Korean Air and then don't you run into the problem of booking award travel on a partner airline? I would hate to go through with this whole exercise then find out there is no partner availability.

Does anyone have any thoughts/recommendations or questions that need to be answered?

Thanks again for reading through all this. This goes under the category of no good deed goes unpunished!

i would take United - its 40k each way. for a total of 160,000 points needed
2 Saphhire Preffered is 80k plus to UA Explorer would be enough

How soon do your neighbors intend to fly? In which cabin: economy, business? You are assuming that all five people must travel on the same aircraft, have you discussed the possibility of flying on two or more airlines on the same dates?

Did you see any availability or were you just looking at the mileage charts? I tried looking into flights on the united website and couldn't find much in March 2013. A few dates had 75k on the EWR-TLV flight, but then not non-stop on the return.

Life would be much easier if they would suck it up and fly with a connection, but the wife said her husband doesn't fly well and has a hard time with takeoffs/landings...

both CO(UA) and US are extremely hard to find Saver Awards for to TLV especially on the non-stops, and when they are there its far from every day. DL is even worse

I do this at least 3x ayr and need to book months ahead of time and then as a 1K I change my Itin 100 times fine tuning it as it closer to the trip dates and more inventory may open up

I would suggest the best Advice you can give them is to either stop in Europe or simply purchase the tkts. Now even with the connection alot of times its for close to 12 hrs and on the way back to the US it requires an overnight with the Hotel at the passengers expense

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AAdvantage miles are redeemable on El Al: 90K for a Coach roundtrip to TLV.

During AA's "off-peak" season between North America and Europe (October 15 to May 15), a Coach roundtrip between North America and TLV can be had for only 80K AAdvantage miles by connecting or stopping over in Europe.

AAdvantage miles are pretty easy to obtain with Citi's credit-card bonuses, and SPG Starwood points can also be converted to AAdvantage miles. There is also speculation that Citi "Thank You" points may soon be convertible to AAdvantage miles, but no official announcement has yet been made.

And of course, both AAdvantage miles and Mileage Plus miles can be redeemed for one-way awards. So perhaps use AA miles in one direction and BA miles in another. But getting five award seats on the same flights might prove challenging.

They want to fly in either March 2013 or August 2013. I don't think they are willing to split up, but I couldn't say for sure.

They only wanted to fly nonstop

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"They only wanted to fly nonstop."

That's OK: they can try to redeem AAdvantage miles for the LY EWR/JFK-TLV nonstops.

a good thing they are very Flex

August is usually Peak time I wouldnt count on 5 tkts on the same flight, March maybe early March as Passover comes out the end of March in '13

I will repeat what I posted earlier their best bet is to Purchase the tkts and forget about Free tkts, TLV is 1 of the most in demand destinations for Award travel and they want to go during Peak Times. sort of looking for free tkts Superbowl weekend or to Orlando when schools are closed for vacation

As someone who just did this for 3 pax in peak season, I'm going to agree with craz and then just give you a general rule about award flying which is extremely relevant to TLV:
You have to have some flexibility in your travels. The greater the flexibility, the easier it is to get flights..

If you want 40k Saver tickets on UA direct r/t to TLV, then you need to travel in dead months, or play roulette and see if something opens up the day before you want to fly. Otherwise, you need to connect through Europe. If these neighbors are willing to connect, the options will open up, even in summer. (routings I've seen recently 40k booked on UA for summer - JFK-YYZ-TLV, JFK-ZRH-TLV, EWR-FRA-TLV, etc).

If they can fly separately that will probably help.

Finally to the points part:
they need at LEAST 200k points (for 5 pax in saver Y on UA, say) in each direction, for a total of 400k.
That's a major churn going on for each of them. It's not a problem, but at that volume of points it's not really YOUR problem. Turn them on to FT and consider your job done.

If you're a masochist and still want to help them:
AA points can be used to book El Al, and there are 50k citi offers around. If you can convince these people to be more flexible then AA points are great (use them to fly on IB, RJ, BA, and probably others I am forgetting).
Chase have Avios, United, Ultimate Rewards, all usable to get to TLV (without commenting on the worth of Avios)
Amex work with Delta, which can get you to TLV on DL, AF, AZ or KLM.

If you're really adventurous you could look for cheap paid positioning flights to Europe and then fly on points from there - it would still cut the price of a flight in half, for 5 people that adds up, especially in summer.

Good luck.

if i book an award ticket to europe and then a revenue ticket to get me on to tlv, is there any protection available for the scenario where the award ticket is delayed and i miss the second flight? (since award tix and revenue tix cannot be on the same ticket)

Probably not - but see this very informative and timely post reneworld
http://boardingarea.com/blogs/viewfr...arate-tickets/

I neglected to answer the prior post, but I don't think they expect 5 free flights. That would be a tall order indeed!

I think I'm going to recommend that they look at flights with certain dates in mind and buy the tickets. I'm guessing they're restricted by Passover (last week March in 2013 - probably their kids spring break) and the start of school in August. Probably can't change their flights too much.

Probably the best cards for them to get for building up future points is the Sapphire Preferred and the Ink Bold. That way they can load up on United points or whatever and go somewhere else at a later date. If they buy their tix using the CSP, they can at least get the double points.

Does this sound like a decent plan?

Free isnt always Free. dont what biz they are in but I have friends that have CCs that gives them back 1-2-3% based on what was charged. They prefer this to getting pts or miles as they then can simply purchase whatever flights they want to when they want to

In your case 400k @ 2% = $8000 thats up to $1600 per tkt to TLV , so they might do better getting a 2%+ CC and put the $$ into an acct and dont touch it