Update 6/14/24: This terrific transfer bonus (that Greg took advantage of during the recent “Flying by the Seat of our Points” Challenge) will be ending tomorrow. If there’s an award you have your eye on, now’s the time to transfer.
~~~
Turkish Miles & Smiles is currently offering a 50% transfer bonus when transferring Citi Thank You points to Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles. Note that the maximum bonus is 50,000 miles and the bonus miles will not post immediately but rather after the promotion ends on June 15, 2024.
The Deal
- Turkish Miles & Smiles is offering a 50% transfer bonus when you transfer Citi ThankYou points to Turkish Miles and Smiles from May 15, 2024 to June 15, 2024 up to a maximum of 50K bonus miles.
- Direct link to this deal
Key Terms
- Campaigns will be planned to be valid for a maximum of 1 month.
- Campaign will provide 50% additional Miles to Miles&Smiles members who convert their ThankYou® Points into Miles&Smiles Miles.
- Within the scope of the special offer, 50% additional Miles will be awarded to members. No additional Status Miles will be awarded.
- Miles&Smiles members can earn Extra Miles up to a maximum of 50,000 Miles.
- The Miles earned during the campaign will be credited after the campaign has ended.
- This offer is only valid to Miles&Smiles members. To benefit from the offer, non-members must first register to Miles&Smiles Program.
- This campaign cannot be combined with any other Turkish Airlines campaign.
Turkish Airlines reserves the right to take legal action against the related parties found to have contravened any rules. - Turkish Airlines reserves the right to change terms and conditions, definitions and other information pertaining to the special offer and to cancel the offer at any time.
- Full ThankYou® Points Transfer Terms & Conditions can be found on thankyou.com/transfer
Quick Thoughts
Turkish Miles & Smiles completely overhauled its award chart a few months ago, and it wasn’t pretty. Many (most?) awards became far more expensive under the new award chart.
However, some decent values have persisted. For instance, a one-way business class award between the US and Istanbul now costs 65K miles one way. With this transfer bonus, you’d only need to transfer 44K ThankYou points to book a one-way business class award. That’s a solid deal.
Unfortunately though, a single round trip business class award would almost hit the maximum number of bonus miles you can earn from the promotion, meaning that you can’t get enough bonus miles to fly a family of even three members to Instanbul at an average price of 44K per passenger since you’ll max out the bonus at 2.5 one-way tickets.
That said, this offer might be most exciting for those who would use their Turkish miles to fly domestically on United Airlines. That’s because Turkish offers one-way Star Alliance domestic redemptions, including from the mainland US to Alaska and Hawaii, for just 10,000 miles each way in economy class. In other words, just 7,000 Citi ThankYou points transferred to Turkish would give you more than enough points for a one-way domestic economy class award on United, even if it covered a span like New York or Boston to Honolulu as in this January 2025 example:
A family of four could theoretically fly round trip to Hawaii for about 54K ThankYou points. That would be an amazing deal, except . . .
- United has been very stingy about releasing award space to partners, even when they have what they label as “saver” space available.
- The 50% bonus from a transfer to Turkish is only scheduled to post as at the end of the promotion window, which is June 15, 2024.
Those two factors could limit the utility of using this deal considerably. On the other hand, if you know and can accept the limitations, this could work out to be a great deal.
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
Note that the actual Turkish offer states:
“ The campaign is valid between 15 May and 15 June 2024, and will end on June 15, 2024 at 23.59 Türkiye time (UTC+3).”
In other words, it ends 11:59 pm Turkey time, not US time. Turkey is 7 hrs ahead of EDT and 10 hrs ahead of PDT, so keep an eye on the time.
Also, I’m already seeing the 50% bonus show up in our 2 Turkish accounts, so you might want to call a rep and confirm it’s still going on before you transfer.
Thanks, this was helpful. The other thing to note is that it takes 1-2 days for the transfer to hit. I skipped the transfer, as I wasn’t sure if the bonus would trigger if initiated on June 15th but arriving in Turkish miles & smiles one day later.
We were fortunate in that our transfers were almost immediate, but we may just have gotten lucky. Still waiting for the 50% bonus to appear in my mother-in-law’s account.
would be helpful if you also pointed out fees in this article A flight from ORD-IST for 65K Turkish miles also has fees of over $600
Details say campaign “will end on June 15, 2024 at 23.59 Türkiye time (UTC+3)” so I think this ends 4:59pm US East Coast time Sat June 15.
I was worried that this offer is not listed in their campaigns page, nor is it listed in their campaigns in the app. But I just called a Turkish rep, and she confirmed this offer is indeed valid. Just transferred 86K in my account and 70K in my wife’s account. Fingers crossed!
[…] to Turkish Airlines: Citi has a 50% transfer bonus to Turkish Airlines through June 15, 2024. See this post on Frequent Miler for all the details. I’ve updated the May 2024 Transfer Bonuses post to reflect this […]
how much of a ticket can you defer with points
Is that a targeted offer, or they’re offering it to anyone?
Good information on the uses of the miles. Personally, I’ve never used the program, but maybe I need to look into it.
Sorry if this is more of a theoretical question, but if the bonus is from the Turkish airlines side of the equation why does the issuer even matter? Why not bonus any points transferred into miles and smiles, from any issuer – ie C1 – too?
Please consult a mental health professional before you transfer your hard earned points to this POS program.
I’m sorry you’ve had such a bad experience. My spouse and I have used Turkish miles about a dozen times to fly business class to Istanbul and beyond, with always excellent service, from start to finish.
The travel experience is fine. I was talking about the FF program itself.
So, if I don’t see the transfer bonus on my transfer screen, do I just trust that the extra will show up in Turkish miles and smiles?
You won’t see it on the transfer screen. This bonus is being offered by Turkish Miles & Smiles, not by Citi (I know that’s not common, but every once in a while a loyalty program offers the bonus on their side instead of the issuer side and that’s what’s happening here). And as it says in the post, you won’t see the bonus miles until the end of the promotion (June 15th) according to the terms.
That’s a lot of trust. But, if it works, I’ll have enough points to fly my family to Hawaii. Crossing my fingers…here goes nothin’!
I can understand some nervousness given that working with Turkish isn’t always smooth. I obviously can’t say for sure that they won’t bungle anything, but this isn’t the first time a loyalty program has run the bonus from their end. Asia miles does it pretty frequently:
https://frequentmiler.com/cathay-pacific-asia-miles-10-transfer-bonus-from-credit-card-partners/
Avianca LifeMiles also does this periodically:
https://frequentmiler.com/15-transfer-bonus-from-amex-to-avianca-lifemiles/
We’ve also seen British Airways do the same from time to time. It’s more common to see the bonus being pushed on the card issuer end, but a bonus on the loyalty program end happens at least a couple of times a year.
The bonus showed up in our accounts, but I’d call a rep and confirm the promo is still in effect. They do reserve the right to end it at any time.
Please remember that United has drastically limited partner access to domestic saver awards recently and only a subset of X class is available to book through Turkish (or any partner). Personally I don’t think it’s worth it for domestic anymore.
https://frequentmiler.com/united-blocking-award-space-from-star-alliance-partners/