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.
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.