how do i fly a family of 10 to israel?

[samicki]

My dream is to take my family to israel next december. Is there any way we can do it, while spending as least as possible in actual dollars?
I read all these dans posts saying they went here, there, and spent no money.can someone help me?
where should i start?

[Fan of Dan]

i see this is your first post welcome to the forums. Start by researching the different cc offers available in the cc thread as well as the many post threads about intl mileage tickets so you can decide which program to use, and therefore will know which cc to open.

[AsherO]

1. You'll be hard pressed (impossible?) to find 10 seats on 1 flight at decent mileage rates.
2. Even if you do find 10 seats for say 80k UA, you'll still have to come up with 800k UA, which is improbably for someone new to the game like you who has no substantial CC spend (if you can spend half a million bucks this year on a CC then it might be doable).
3. Without knowing what your current CC portfolio/income/credit situation etc. noone can guide you as to which cards to apply for etc. I'm not suggesting you post it all, I'm just saying it would be hard to predict what you'd get approved for.

[MnM1130]

you can sign up for cc's.... (read about in the forum) and u can use those points to sell- and take the cash and buy tickets... wait for some special to come out and u can most def get 10 seats for a good price...

[Fan of Dan]

True but I agree with AsherO that for ten seats that's is quite a feat especially assuming that the person posing the question doesn't have alot of spending.

[samicki]

thanks for the replies-
we spend about 2000 a month on cc'ds.
what is 80k UA ? what does it stand for?
approx how much would be one seat in mileage? what would my goal need to be?

[sky121]

One Coach ticket is 80,000 miles in the lowest class.

[shmuelb]

IME you shoud usually sell your miles/points and buy tickets for NYC-TLV.

Here in EY, there are ways to save money. Do you have relatives you can stay by? Do you want to swap apartments with a family?

Do not use your regular cell with roaming.

Use busses, but with 10 ppl may be cheaper to hire a driver with a van/minibus or rent 2 mid-sized cars.

Hatzlacha!

[smiley face]

We are planning the same trip with 10+ ppl for April 2013!!
Do u have to all fly together? Because u can get award tickets with miles but I doubt u can get all 10 on the same flight.
Sign up for as many cc as u can!!! And either use them for some of the people or sell the miles hatzlacha rabbah!

[kivabb]

Thanks to Dan and this great site, I just got 8 seats on same flights to Israel this summer EWR-TLV. I even managed to get one way in BizFirst on UA. You need to plan ahead and be willing to stop over in YYZ on Air Canada. Even after I took the 8 seats, I see there's 6 seats still available which would cover most large families 

I had to use UA miles to get 2 one ways because I was afraid the outbound wouldn't be available once the return was available (338 days I think). I was hoping to use US miles and do the 3 day hold shtick for 2 weeks, but when UA was showing 8 seats on AC, US only showed 4.

Thanks again!