How I Booked Airfare to Israel for $157

Let’s rewind it back to 2018. Basically, I was still trying to balance and juggle multiple things in my life like traveling overseas to visit family and being in grad school. Somewhere in the midst of that, I found out that some of my dear friends from my church were going to move out to Israel for work!

While saddened that they’d be gone on an expatriate work assignment for 2 or more years, I realized that it would be quite the opportunity to visit Israel for the first time and have familiar faces on the ground with them moving there!

Fast forward to late summer 2019. Since they moved to Israel, I traveled to the Philippines, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, California, and Arizona. Needless to say…I racked up a lot of airline miles with American Airlines.

Oh, and I still had some leftover miles from living in Japan for six months in 2017.

So when I returned home from a work trip to Japan back in August 2019, I knew the time was right to go burn some miles and go visit my friends in Israel!

When it was all said and done, I had plane tickets to Israel from Texas spending 110,000 miles and $157 USD (Economy class going there, and one leg in Business class coming back).

How I Booked The Trip

I used American Airlines’ own search tool for finding award space, or seats that are available for miles redemptions.

After logging in at aa.com, I clicked the “Advanced / Multi-city Search” link on the bottom right of the home page.

This took me to the advanced search screen, and at the top, there is a different link to a new award search. I like this new award search better because it displays the cost of taxes and fees while searching whereas the old way doesn’t display that cost to you until you’re about to book.

After clicking that, I input my search parameters. I knew I needed to fly from DFW to TLV (Tel Aviv), and I chose some dates in early November that gave me about a week’s worth of time.

Ok, so…honestly…I spent A LOT of time messing with this. Maybe like…3 days of searching around. To summarize the struggle of it all, I had some specific wants and nice-to-haves as well as requirements when searching:

• Minimize taxes and fees (because redeeming miles doesn’t cover these costs)
• Nov 7 thru Nov 14 had to be the dates, give or take a day on either end because I wanted to maximize my time there while not going severely negative on my vacation hours
• Decent layover times, if necessary even if ridiculously long
• Fly Business class at some point over the Atlantic Ocean

When thumbing through the available options, I was looking at a screen similar to this:

It was rather difficult to find an itinerary that allowed for most of this to happen. I frequently ran into something that seemed like it could work out but having to compromise elsewhere.

I wrestled with having layovers in London or in Amman or maybe avoiding British Airways altogether because they charge higher taxes and fees. I even explored having other connections within the US.

In the end…I booked:

• Coach class Nov 7 DFW-MAD-TLV for 40,000 miles / $79.60
• Business class Nov 14 TLV-LHR-MIA-DFW for 70,000 miles / $77.84
  • *Note: it’s only Business class between London Heathrow and Miami

Total: 110,000 miles / $157.44

I actually booked it as two one-way trips. I had to do that because booking a similar roundtrip award ticket would have costed me 140,000 miles and about the same in taxes/fees. I wanted to save the miles 🙂

Another thing to point is that I’ve got 9 hours on the ground in Madrid. And 16 hours in London. My goal is to be out and about in Madrid, and probably just stick around the airport while in London because London is an overnight layover.

The trip WOULD have costed me…

On the day that I booked my trip, for funsies I decided to look on Google Flights to see how much it would have been.

Going from from Dallas to Tel Aviv with the layover in Madrid in Economy class all the way, it would have been $2081!

And coming back via London and Miami would have been… a whopping $8980! Although, on Google Flights…it’s probably quoting a higher price because I couldn’t simulate my itinerary due to me being in Business class ONLY from London to Miami.

Still…visual proof:

Yikes.

So…altogether…if I had booked two one-ways on paid tickets for the same (or really similar) itinerary, the airfare WOULD/COULD have been…

Total = $11061

Now, that’s a really crazy number.

Granted, most normal people would be satisfied prioritizing lowest cost with roundtrip ticket in Economy class. And looking at Google Flights right now, a few days before I leave, such tickets are costing around $1000 and above.

Yeah, I’m glad I’m not paying even over $200 out of pocket. And that I have the miles.

Speaking of miles…

How I Earned The Miles

I mentioned earlier that I had leftover miles from traveling in 2017 due to a six-month work assignment in Japan. And I’ll add that I even did some “mileage running” to help secure elite status, and that added some miles too.

Back in July/August of 2019, I had a business trip to Japan. And that contributed as well (about ~50,000 miles earned).

But actually! A good chunk of miles that I earned this year weren’t even from flying!

Rather…shopping.

American Airlines has a shopping portal that you can tie your frequent flyer account to. They partner with many stores. Basically, you do your online shopping through AA’s portal and earn miles. 

Different stores have different earning rates. For example, Home Depot is typically 1 mile per $1 spent. Whereas Under Armour is typically 3 miles per $1 spent.

Sometimes there are bonuses.

Notice in the above picture that I earned 14,133 miles this year, which is more than half of what I’ve earned total since being enrolled in AA’s shopping portal.

A large contributor was purchasing my refurbished MacBook Pro 15” from Apple when they were running a 4 miles per $1 spent (normally 1 mile / $1). Uh wow, I earned 10,786 miles just from upgrading my laptop (and becoming #MacbookBroke)!

I also did a lot of smaller purchases but catching big bonuses.

After all the earning and saving miles, I had about ~150,000 to use. And 110,000 of that went towards this trip.

How else can I earn miles?

Note: while I do focus on American Airlines below, these methods are also applicable to other airlines, especially if they are a major airline. 

Fly

This is the quickest way. Haha, not much else to say here. However, the rate at which you can earn miles via flying will depend on elite status and if you’re flying on airline partners. Basically, the more elite you are, the more miles you can earn.

Also, class of service also impacts your miles earning. The more premium the class, the more miles you earn. 

More information on AA’s site here.

For earning miles for this Israel trip, I did quite a bit of flying.

Credit Card Bonuses

The second quickest way is to earn credit card bonuses. American Airlines has several co-branded credit cards, like the Citi cards, that grant bonus miles after meeting a minimum credit card spend. 

Typically, you have to spend $3000 or more within a few months to earn 50,000 miles or more, depending on the current bonus/promotion. 

Also, some of the credit cards out there let you earn miles just by using the card for purchases. Some categories of spending like Dining or Groceries earn bonus miles depending on the card.

I don’t have any American Airlines credit cards, but I have utilized credit card bonuses in other rewards programs.

Shopping Portal

I’ve already explained this above, but I find this to be a decent way to earn miles even without flying.

And actually…you can combine shopping with an AA credit card and those will double-stack!

Link to AAdvantage Shopping.

Dining Portal

In addition to the shopping portal, American Airlines has a dining portal. In this portal, the program partners with different restaurants. Again, you’ll tie it to your frequent flyer account.

You add your credit or debit card information to the portal, and anytime you eat at any of the listed restaurants, you earn miles based on your spending. 

Here’s the link to AA’s Dining Program.

I’ve found this typically to be a slow way to earn miles…probably because…I never seem to eat at the partnered restaurants! I should probably look at the list again…haha…

Buying Miles

Lastly, the other way to get miles is to simply buy them. Sometimes American Airlines runs bonuses so you can earn more miles per your own dollar spent.

I’ve read on travel blogs that this isn’t really a cost-effective way to get miles. However, it’s great if you’re short miles for an award redemption you’re wanting to do.

American Airlines usually emails about bonus buying miles for frequent flyers.

Bottom Line

Regardless of what crazy itinerary I can come up with that needlessly raises the cost of airline tickets to Israel, I probably would have spent over $1000 on airfare at minimum.

But thanks to frequent flying in the past and the shopping portal, I was able to pull off only spending $157 out of pocket and 110,000 miles. And that’s pretty good for flying cheap, and a little bit of style with Business class over the Atlantic coming home.

There are a handful of other ways to earn miles, and most of them don’t even require actually flying. 

My hope with this post is that you’re able to see that … earning and using miles is a great way to travel for less money. So if you have your eyes set on a great pilgrimage to the Holy Land, somewhere in Europe, or elsewhere…you can use miles to get there far more cheaper.

Got a question about airline miles? Let me know in the comments!

Featured Photo by David McBee from Pexels