How We Bought 2 Tickets to Israel for Free
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Travel is expensive. Whew! Now that that’s out there, let’s dive in to how my husband and I managed to buy two round trip tickets to Israel during a peak travel season for free.
We each have different travel reward credit cards. I have the AAdvantage Platinum Select card and the Chase Sapphire Preferred card. My husband has the Delta Gold, Chase Freedom, Chase Unlimited and the Chase Sapphire Reserve card. Think he likes Chase? No surprise he’s how I was introduced to the preferred card. With our card combination, we have a variety of options available to us for free or lower cost travel.
One of the most important things to keep in mind when redeeming points is flexibility.
We have about a two and a half week window of when we wanted to go and looked around for the flights that matched our schedule, a decent connection if the flight wasn’t direct, and didn’t cost $2,000+ per ticket for an economy seat. Our favorite way to do this is via Google Flights. It’s easy to see across airlines and price differences between days.
After selecting the dates we wanted to go and finding an Iberia flight with a stop in Madrid, we tried redeeming my American Airline miles first. AA is part of the Oneworld Alliance and also has some reward redemption agreements with other airlines, such as Iberia and British Airways. This allows us to use AA miles on other airlines. (Note if you want to do this, you will need to book with the airline your miles/points are with rather than the airline you want to fly.)
However, if we flew these airlines, we’d lose the non-stop flight option AND in some cases, end up paying almost $300 in taxes per ticket just to use points. This is not a good deal. Although it would’ve been nice to briefly relive my summer abroad and eat some churros, this option was not for us. I have the AA card as I fly them most often due to Miami being a hub. But as you can see here though, their miles aren’t the best to redeem and it’ll be interesting to see how the new loyalty program plays out.
After learning that flying Oneworld is not a favorable option, we researched flights in the Chase Ultimate Rewards mall and narrowed in on direct flights Miami to Tel Aviv on El Al. In redeeming points for travel in the Chase online portal, your redemption value varies based on what tier card you have. My card (the preferred) gives 1.25 in value in their portal whereas my husband’s card (the reserve) gives 1.5 in value. So his points go further!
Now this is where things get fun. We’ve spent maybe an hour and a half so far working on this puzzle, consulting holiday dates, family schedules, and flight options. We’ve found the El Al flights we want to take. The next step for us was to add each other as travel partners on our respective Chase accounts. His card is worth more but I have more points, so it made sense for him to book the travel and me to send over the balance points due. Directly from the Chase Ultimate Rewards FAQ: “You can move points, but only to another Chase card with Ultimate Rewards belonging to you, or one member of your household.” Wouldn’t you know, we’re a household! :)
We called in, linked our accounts and I transferred the balance due of points for the trip. The call was quick and within 5 minutes of transferring points, they were reflected in his account. We booked the tickets!
How much was everything for an October trip to Israel?
If we paid out of pocket for 2 round trip direct flight economy El Al tickets, it would’ve cost us $2,245.86. Instead, we redeemed 149,724 Ultimate Rewards points and paid no sales tax (unlike other options).
So TLDR; how’d we do it? It’s all because of Chase travel credit card points.