Thanks for the advice, I'm def going to sell the Transavia flight as our best option to the boss. I now see that I can book the KLM flight in E for only 19,333 Chase points, so that is my cheapest option if we end up taking KLM.
The other alternative would be 25k Amex points to book an E seat on El Al at 11:45am, which I wouldn't want to do.