How I Booked My Flights to Iran

Last year I had a tour booked to Iran, but at the last minute we found out that we weren’t able to go because Iran had temporarily stopped issuing visa to Americans. (I went to Iraqi Kurdistan instead.) Fortunately, the tour was rescheduled for this year and was able to get a visa without a hitch!

I waited until I had my visa to book my flights, because last year it was a big hassle to change flights after the fact. Unfortunately, that meant that prices had gone up quite a bit and there weren’t any cheap options to fly from basically anywhere in Europe, which is where I was leading up to the Iran portion of the trip. I was in Munich for Oktoberfest, so I wanted to fly out from somewhere within five hours of there. The cheapest economy class flight that was available cost over $500!

When flight prices are high, it’s a great time to use miles so I knew that’s what I would be doing. Singapore Airlines charges only 17,500 miles to fly in economy between Europe and Iran, so I chose to visit Salzburg, Austria for a couple of days before flying out. The flight options weren’t great – I had to chose between arriving in Tehran at about 3am and paying for an extra night at a hotel or overnighting at Istanbul International Airport (IST) for 10 hours.

Since I have the United Club card which gets me access to Star Alliance Business Class lounges when I’m flying Star Alliance, I elected for the long, overnight layover at IST. Turkish’s Business Class Lounge at IST is one of my favorites, so I wasn’t sad to be spending extra time there, even though overnighting in the lounge doesn’t make for a great night of sleep.

I didn’t have enough Singapore Airlines miles in my account to book the tickets on Turkish, but I was able to transfer Citi ThankYou Points I earned from the sign-up bonus for the Citi Prestige Card in order to have enough. Chase Ultimate Rewards and American Express Membership Rewards also transfer to Singapore Airlines, making it a really flexible currency. The taxes and fees for the flight added up to about $150 per ticket, which gave me a redemption value of over 2 cents per point for an economy booking.

Fortunately, the return flight options were a little bit better. I had four days to kill before needing to be in Vienna, so I decided to go to the UAE. There was a flight available on Air Arabia to Sharjah for only $130 which meant that using miles wasn’t worth it. The flight from Dubai to Vienna was available for about the same price.

Iran definitely isn’t the cheapest place to fly in and out of, but a combination of miles and flexibility means that I was able to book pretty reasonable flights even at the last minute!