Getting to israel with starwood points

[Yordai Dooma]

We all know that it is possible to fly to Israel round-trip using only 40,000 starwood points transferred over to an airline(Big thanks to . My understanding is that this can be done on alitalia, air france, klm, and LAN.

My wife and i would like to go to israel in April (after pesach) and we have plenty of starwood points to cover the tickets. Can someone direct me the way to go about doing this? Does someone have miles in any of these programs that can check availability for me? I created a flying blue account but cant check availability. I tried to create an alitalia account but their website seems all screwy.

Perhaps someone who has successfully gone this route can direct us on how to it.

Thanks!

[MOSES]

try calling in and tell them you dont know your number off hand.... sometimes they will look it up for you...

[Mikeoracle]

that this can be done on alitalia, air france, klm, and LAN.

If you cant find the availability for 40K with this method, you can try the method I posted a little while back that comes to 50K direct flight on CO or US from PHL or with a stop on Swiss, Lufthansa or Turkish etc... (*a members) I can check availability on those if you need me to. (here is the link to my post;
http://www.dansdeals.com/forums/index.php?topic=1196.0 )

To recap this method- you would transfer Starpoints to ANA at 1:1 or 20K *points to 25K ANA. ANA takes 60K for NY to TLV on any of their partners on Star alliance so 50K starpoints will be 60K ANA. Keep in mind that the fees on these tickets will depend on which partner you redeem on, CO would be about $100 but the non US carriers can be $300-$400 (similar to the fees on the Flying Blue deal you are referring to). Also keep in mind that the transfer can take a few weeks so the earlier you decide the better your availability.

[MOSES]

why can you call any airlaine and check yourself. make as if you will purchase the necassery amount of miles???
if that doesnt work i can check aa for you, and maybe even co

[yudkay]

I'm just starting to look into if I can get a round trip from NY to TlV using my starwood points. can someone direct me to where i can figure out the process? I'm not following this discussion with enough background.