Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles Sweet Spot: 10K Award Domestic Star Alliance Flights (Including in the US to Hawai’i or Alaska!)
I promised in my last post covering the Hilton promo that I would cover one of Turkish Airlines loyalty program’s sweet spot – showing you how those 1,000 Miles&Smiles miles can be worth more than you are probably thinking that they are.
TURKISH AIRLINE MILES&SMILES PROGRAM (MINI) OVERVIEW
I will do a more in depth dive into the program at another time but wanted to highlight the program before discussing the sweet spot. A loyalty program is how you are able to earn and redeem miles on an airline or their partner. A reminder that you don’t have to be a frequent flier with that airline (or in general) to benefit! For Turkish Airlines, their program is called Miles&Smiles.
How to earn miles
- Flying with Turkish Airlines or partner airlines (Star Alliance members and other partners).
- Booking with partner hotels (such as Hilton, Marriott, Radisson) or rental car services (Avis, Budget, Europcar) – this is different than the Hilton promo that I posted about it in that you would be opting to earn Smiles&Miles miles instead of points with the hotel!
- Shopping with co-branded credit cards or on the Turkish Airlines online shop.
- Purchasing miles directly or through promotions. • Everyday spending with program-affiliated credit cards.
Redeeming miles
- Use miles to book free tickets or partially pay for flights with cash + miles for Turkish Airlines flights
- Redeem miles for Star Alliance partner award flights
Turkish Airlines and Miles&Smiles Good
- Did you know that Turkish Airlines flies to more destinations than any other airline worldwide?
- Searching for and booking award flights on Turkish Airlines especially when for more than one person is a lesson in patience – honestly, it can be infuriating but worth the savings.
TURKISH AIRLINES CREDIT CARD TRANSFER PARTNERS
- Bilt Rewards: 1:1 transfer ratio; xfers usually nearly instant
- Capital One: 1:1 transfer ratio; xfers usually take up to 48 hours
- Citi ThankYou Rewards: 1:1 transfer ratio; xfers typically take less than 24 hours
CREDIT CARDS: These cards are currently offering great sign up bonuses that would allow you to transfer to Miles&Smiles!
- Bilt Credit Card – the card that allows you to pay your rent and earn points for travel! *Please note that in order for me to get credit for the referral, you must create your Bilt Rewards account and apply for the credit card through my link
- Capital One Venture – there is currently an elevated sign up bonus, read this for all the details
TURKISH AIRLINE MILES&SMILES SWEET SPOT
This is one of my favorite beautiful tips for flight award redemptions: many times, the best value for booking an award flight is to NOT book directly with the airline’s own loyalty program. Crazy right?
This is when practicing running award searches and learning about airline alliances can pay off big time for you. Even better is when you discover a sweet spot with a loyalty program AKA when the reward redemption is especially juicy. Or lucky for you, have someone who can tell you about that sweet spot ;-). Miles&Smiles has one very sweet spot with its domestic Star Alliance awards for 10,000 miles each way in economy and 15,000 miles each way in business. Note that it is extremely difficult to find the business awards as United is notorious for not releasing seats to partners.
My own real life example:
This was when I was searching for a flight into Miami for my comped Princess Southern Caribbean Medley. A very expensive time to fly as my cruise was a New Years holiday cruise and I was flying into MIA as the top left photo shows. I lucked out in that one of the flights on United was priced as a saver award fare as shown on the right hand photo.
When I searched for the flight on Air Canada and Turkish Airlines, you can see the savings from using a Star Alliance partner rather than booking with United Airlines directly for that flight – a savings of 5K points/miles on Air Canada but with an additional $39CAD booking fee and 7,500 miles on Turkish Airlines and paying the same $5.60 in taxes!
Where this becomes especially enticing for people is that Turkish Airlines has Hawai’i and Alaska in the same award category. For many other programs, Hawai’i is listed as it’s own award zone so the value is tremendous here as an economy ticket would still only be only 10,000 miles and $5.60!
This would also be true for domestic flights with a Star Alliance partner for other large countries such as Air Canada within Canada or China on Air China or within India on Air India!
I will look into this, I want to go to Hawaii. Thanks!…
Regards for helping out, excellent information.
Having read this I thought it was very informative. I appreciate you taking the time and effort to put this article together. I once again find myself spending way to much time both reading and commenting. But so what, it was still worth it!