(EXPIRED) Buy Turkish miles from $0.02 each

Turkish Miles & Smiles is offering up to 50% bonus miles when you buy 4,000 miles or more. Today, they extended the sale through 10/30/19. With the bonus, you can buy miles from $0.02 each, which can be a great deal for Turkish’s many sweet spot awards.

The Deal

• Buy Turkish Miles & Smiles miles with the following bonuses based on volume:
  • Buy 4,000 miles or more, get a 30% bonus (2.3c per mile)
  • Buy 20,000 miles or more, get a 40% bonus (2.14c per mile)
  • Buy 50,000 miles or more, get a 50% bonus (2c per mile)
• The bonus is not reflected during the purchase but will instead post to your account by 10/31/19.

Key Terms

• You can buy up to 100K miles before the bonus (which would become 150K miles with the bonus) per calendar year
• Bonus miles expire 10/31/20 — you have only 1 year to use the bonus miles
• Note that while the terms posted at Loyalty Lobby indicate an end date of 10/26/19, the promotion was extended until 10/30/19 today

Quick Thoughts

This could be a fantastic deal for the right Star Alliance redemptions. We broke the news this summer when Turkish began charging just 7,500 miles each way for domestic United flights, including to and from Hawaii for 7.5K and $5.60. We then wrote about how to book those awards via email and subsequently how to book them via phone, eventually publishing a complete guide to booking United flights with Turkish Miles & Smiles.

Greg also published a post about how to book flights to Hawaii from anywhere in the US for $386 round trip by buying Citi ThankYou points. That was assuming buying points at a rate of $0.025 each (two and a half cents each) from Citi. With this current deal, if you buy enough miles to pay just two cents per point ($0.02), that would drop the cost to just $300 for enough points to book a round trip domestic award on United anywhere they fly. That includes transcons, expensive regionals, Hawaii, Alaska, flights with multiple connections, etc. Enough miles to book business class would be $500 round trip (12.5K miles each way) if you can find availability.

Unfortunately, phone agents started reporting an inability to book Star Alliance awards about a month ago. However, both my experience and that of readers reporting in our Frequent Miler Insiders group has indicated success via the email method (if you can get an itinerary on hold via email, you can call in to ticket over the phone).

I wouldn’t necessarily recommend buying miles speculatively. However, if you’re able to put an award on hold, you should be able to then buy miles directly from Turkish with the miles posting to your account instantly. The bonus is on the following sliding scale:

• Buy 4,000 miles or more, get a 30% bonus (2.3c per mile)
• Buy 20,000 miles or more, get a 40% bonus (2.14c per mile)
• Buy 50,000 miles or more, get a 50% bonus (2c per mile)

You can buy up to 100K miles before the bonus, which would mean you’d get a total of 150K miles for $3,000.

In order to purchase miles, you’ll need to log in to your account and click the “Miles transactions” tab.

Then you should see the option to buy under “My miles transactions”:

Then you should see the option to “Buy” under “My Miles Transactions”.

You’ll want to buy “bonus miles” rather than status miles. The site does not show the bonus when purchasing (rather you’ll be charged the full 3c per mile initially and see the bonus miles post later). According to Loyalty Lobby, the terms indicate that the additional bonus miles will post by 10/31/19 and those bonus miles will be set to expire on 10/31/20 (so be sure to only purchase miles you can use).

I’m not jumping on this deal right away but I’m going to keep it in mind as I can’t seem to get enough Turkish miles at the moment. I can’t find this promotion listed on the website, but it did pop up in my Turkish Airlines app today. The terms posted by Loyalty Lobby indicate that it is open to everyone, so everyone who buys by 10/30/19 should receive the commensurate bonus miles.

Overall, this is a solid deal if you can put the miles to use. Between some good sweet spots and monthly 30%-off deals (currently New York, Houston, Los Angeles, and many more cities are available for 30% off normal award rates to Instanbul for travel next month), it could be well worth buying miles.

H/T: Loyalty Lobby

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