How to avoid high surcharges for redemption flights from Sydney to Tel Aviv?

Frequent Flyer Programs
1

Hi,

I’m originally from Israel, currently happily living in Sydney.
I have redeemed in the past a few flights to/from TLV and it was always involving a very high surcharge (350 AUD one way with Cathay economy TLV-SYD for example).

I am saving up points for Singapore Airlines Business class, which is 152K miles + 750 AUD (!!!) return.
I can definitely fly to Europe instead because I am expecting to visit some other cities during my visit.

Other options:
SYD-IST (Istanbul)return: 172K + 180 AUD
SYD-FCO (Rome, or other destination in Europe) 232K + 245 AUD

I am expected to fly with my GF so I kinda don’t wanna by 1500 AUD out of pocket for a “free” flight.

Any ideas how to make the best out of this situation and the hell TLV is so expensive in surcharges?

Return economy IST-TLV is 1000 AUD~ (2p) so no real point saving there.

Thanks!
Ofir

2

The reason this happens is because Krisflyer starts including surcharges when you include a non-Singapore Airlines flight to your redemption.

Personally, I would fly to a relatively convenient Singapore Airlines serviced port and take a budget flight to TLV.

3

What you are saying makes sense, but flying with SQ all the way is 232K miles instead of 156K miles.

So by doing that, I will be paying 1000 AUD less and 152K miles more.

I think I will just pay that amount of money, I don’t see any other better way.

It seems like all redeemed flight to/from TLV are high in surcharge. With Cathay and Korean I paid 350~ AUD one way involving only one airline.

4

If you value $1000 above 152K KF miles, by all means. I know many people that are happy to pay 0.66 cents per KF miles. Myself included as I can extract way more than 0.66 cpm from KF miles. Each to their own really. Maybe you can generate large amount of points at very little costs.