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Yesterday, Prince of Travel flagged a near absolute obliteration of the Turkish Miles & Smiles award chart, with almost all awards massively increasing in price to the tune of 80% or more “overnight”. I put overnight in quotation marks because so far, I’m only seeing these prices in the new award chart — they aren’t yet reflected in search results on the website at the time of writing this post. And, oddly, Turkish is still publishing the old award chart. This much I can say with confidence: If you have Turkish miles stashed away for a rainy day, meteorologists are calling for a thunderstorm right now. Use them now….or use a lot more later. At least, probably. You know those meteorologists aren’t always right . . .
Update: The Turkish Miles & Smiles site now says that “You can view award ticket Miles values valid until February 15, 2024, from the links below” before the links to the “old” award charts. While the wording doesn’t explicitly say this, I take that to mean that the current “old” award pricing is valid for about one more week and the “new” award chart will take effect on or around February 15, 2024.
Previous Turkish Miles & Smiles sweet spots
Turkish Miles & Smiles has long published a couple of award charts. One chart, called the “Award Ticket Table” has long been the rough equivalent of an “anytime” award chart. On the other hand, the “Promotional Ticket Table” has been the equivalent of a “saver” award chart. That “promotional” table has always applied to Star Alliance partner awards. There was further a separate chart for “domestic” Star Alliance tickets.
Some of the long-time sweet spots of the “Promotional” ticket table have included:
- Business class to Europe for 45K miles one way
- Business class to the Middle East for 47K miles one way
- Business class to “Central Asia” (including India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and more) for 52.5K miles one way
- Business class from “South America” to “South America” (Note: A lot of the Caribbean is classified as “South America”) for 35K in business class
- Economy class to the Middle East for 32K one way
- Economy class to Central Asia for 34K one way
- Economy class within the United States (including to Alaska and Hawaii) for 7.5K one way
- Business class within the United States (including to Alaska and Hawaii) for 12.5K one way
That’s not an exhaustive list by any stretch, just a “greatest hits” selection. Turkish Miles & Smiles has had a number of very well-priced awards for a long time. See Turkish Miles & Smiles business class sweet spots from the US for more detail.
The trade-off has always been that awards can be notoriously difficult to book: the website doesn’t show all of the availability it should and phone agents frequently can’t see availability (even things that the website can see). Email has been the way to go, but it often takes dozens of emails to different ticket offices to know that you’ll get a helpful response. Even if the stars align, it can be difficult to book for others if you haven’t first booked an award for yourself.
The New Turkish Miles & Smiles Award Chart
The Turkish website is displaying entirely new award charts for “Turkish Airlines award tickets” and “Award tickets on partner airlines” on the page that has long housed their award chart information. Whereas the old award chart displayed round-trip pricing (a one-way award was half the number of miles down on the old chart), the new chart says that prices are valid one-way.
Their award chart is written in a Turkiye-centric manner. Rather than attempt to re-write the entire chart, here is a comparison for partner awards as per the sweet spots noted above:
- Business class to Europe increases from 45K miles one way to 85,000 miles one way
- Business class to the Middle East increases from 47K miles one way to 93,000 miles one way
- Business class to “Central Asia” (including India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and more) increases from 52.5K miles one way to 100,000 miles one way
- Business class from “South America” to “South America” (Note: A lot of the Caribbean is classified as “South America”) increases from 35K in business class to 50,000 miles one way
- Economy class to the Middle East increases from 32K one way to 58,000 miles one way
- Economy class to Central Asia increases from 34K one way to 60,000 miles one way
- Economy class within the United States (including to Alaska and Hawaii) increases from 7.5K one way to 10,000 miles one way
- Business class within the United States (including to Alaska and Hawaii) increases from 12.5K one way to 15,000 miles one way
As you can see, many awards have nearly doubled in price. Similar increases can be found for one-way tickets to/from Asia and Africa as well.
The one place where the devaluation won’t be as painful is for domestic economy class tickets on United (when there is saver/partner availability). While those economy class awards increase by 33% and business class awards increase by 20%, Turkish will still have the best deal running for flights to/from Hawaii and Alaska as well as long-haul across the United States.
Turkish is still publishing the old award charts, too….and they updated them to make them look nicer. (Weird!)
You may not be shocked to hear that Turkish’s website hasn’t been updated (hold your laughter) to reflect the new award pricing, but odder still is the fact that the old award charts still exist. And I don’t mean that they exist in the Internet wayback machine, but rather if you scroll down the page from the new Turkish Airlines award chart, you find this weird award calculator example that demonstrates that the “new” pricing is additive — which is to say that the “new” price for Dubai (Middle East) to London (Europe 2) is 33,000 miles one way in economy class according to the “new” award chart, and the example shown below the chart demonstrates how they came to that new award chart price: it is the result of the additive price of the “new” Dubai (Middle East) to Istanbul (Turkiye), which would cost 18,000 miles, and the price from Istanbul (Turkiye) to London (Europe 2), which would cost 15,000 miles in economy class (18K + 15K = 33K). I guess I like that they are showing their work like it’s high school math class (hey, Wyndham Rewards Shopping Portal, take note), but I hope that the additive pricing won’t continue if you have an award with more segments.
However, odder still is the fact that directly below that calculator example are links to what we’re calling the “old” award chart. In the screen shot above, see the tiny red font at the bottom; there are links to awards on Turkish airlines and an “Award ticket on partner airlines” document. That link goes here.
And that’s where things get downright weird. That link is to a PDF document of the “old” award chart that looks like this:
Further down that chart, we see the “old” Star Alliance “domestic” award pricing and the explanation that the above chart shows round-trip pricing but that a one-way is half the price of a round trip.
The above is all exactly the old “Promotional Ticket Table”, except that the Promotional Ticket Table never had any color to it (versus this PDF with red and shades of grey). In my years of covering Turkish Miles & Smiles, I’ve never seen that award chart in PDF / color form. I’m not saying it hasn’t previously existed — maybe there has previously been a link to that PDF somewhere and I just missed it, but I don’t think that PDF has existed for a very long time at least. Just to see if I was crazy, I took a peek back in time with the Wayback Machine and as recently as January 30th, that page looked the same as I remember it, without any link to a PDF-form award chart (nor does the Wayback Machine have any record of the link to the new PDF having existed previously).
Why would they go to the trouble of creating a “prettier” and PDF-ified version of the “old” award chart if they were immediately planning to do away with it? I don’t get it.
New award pricing has NOT YET taken effect
The good news as I write this post a couple of hours before publication is that the “new” award pricing has not yet taken effect. Many of the best award chart sweet spots still exist….for now.
For instance, as noted above, one of the best sweet spots in the Turkish Miles & Smiles award chart has long been business class to Europe. At 45K miles one-way, this award is only marginally more than most programs charge for economy class tickets to Europe. While Turkish passes on carrier-imposed surcharges, you can fly several carriers to Europe that do not add surcharges on their flights. A few hours ago, I priced out this itinerary from Miami to Lisbon in business class for 45,000 miles and $5.60.
Under the new award chart pricing, that same flight looks like it is slated to cost 85,000 miles one way.
That same 45K pricing has been valid on Turkish flights to Istanbul from the United States. Again, as of a few hours before this post published, there were still a number of seats on some days from New York to Istanbul for 45K miles and $217.
Award prices to other regions are also pricing according to the “old” chart. For instance, this flight from Newark to Dubai is pricing at 32,000 miles one-way in economy class. Since that follows the “old” award chart pricing (it would be 58K under the “new” chart), I assume that if you’re able to find business class availability it should still price at 47K miles one way.
Business class to Central Asia is still ringing in at 52,500 miles one-way, such as this one-way from New York to Deli, India for 52,500 miles and $29.00 in business class.
And those who share my love of the Hawaiian Islands will be happy to hear that routes like Chicago to Maui (via San Francisco in this case) are still pricing at 7,500 miles and $5.60 one way when you can find availability.
Bottom line
Turkish Miles & Smiles has published a new award chart without any announcement about when it will take effect. It represents a massive devaluation, with the cost of many awards nearly doubling. However, at the moment, awards are pricing according to the historical award chart — and Turkish is still publishing links to that award chart also on the same page where its “new” chart exists. If you have Turkish Miles & Smiles miles collecting dust, it likely time to brush them off and find a redemption you like right now. I’d recommend booking sooner rather than later.
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[…] not going to go over all the routes that have increased in price, as it has been written about elsewhere. Most of the sweet spots are pretty much gone. There are now better miles for almost all of the […]
7 minutes ago the clock struck midnight in Istanbul and these dramatic changes are set to take effect today. I was lucky to use up my balance for a couple of longhaul EVA Air Business Class flights. Ticket offices responded to me quickly and payment over the phone was nerve racking (they don’t take AMEX, you have to enter your card number and online PIN about 5-6 times) but ultimately successful. RIP to Miles&Smiles. As someone very funnily wrote, TK agents make Lifemiles agents look like NH agents. Happy Valentine’s Day.
The new chart has Istanbul to North America at 65K biz saver and 135K biz regular on TK. Every award that I can find available is 115K Istanbul to North America. And regular econ is listed at 55K, but I’m seeing 52.5K. Huh? Looking for beginning of August 2024.
Turkish sent an email which stated the new award chart will take effect on 2/15/24.
The changes reported thus far are for the “discount” awards only (eg, 45,000 for one-way transatlantic business class). From what I can see, no comment or indication yet regarding the “full price” or “last seat” awards (eg, 105,000 for one-way transatlantic business class). Any clarity on this?
I saw the award chart for non saver on another site. From US to Europe 1 or 2 it was 165k-175k now vs 115k before for the non saver rate.
That totally sucks ! (
Opened Bilt, Citi and Cap.One credit cards last year specifically to accumulate miles and fly SFO-IST in Turkish Business.. Now it shows 105K miles when available.
That’s the anytime price. It is always shown that price if there were no saver seats available. It’s going to be going up soon. You’re looking more saver awards over the next few days.
This is an excellent reminder of the huge danger with Bilt’s ‘game changing’ (lol) transfer bonuses. The podcast mentioned this danger in a sentence or two on the podcast, which completely undersold it in my opinion.
The entire value of Bilt is premised on you speculatively transferring to a single currency and praying that an overnight decimation of that currency does not completely eradicate the transfer bonus you just used.
As we have now seen time and time and time again (UA, CX, TK, etc etc etc), devaluations happen regularly and randomly.
Some food for thought for anyone thinking of hopping on the Bilt bandwagon.
In fairness, we have always warned against speculatively transferring for this reason. However, with a 100 or 150% transfer bonus, the math changes a bit on that. Even at 25% transfer bonuses, we have long had some readers who insist that they always transfer speculatively to programs that they use frequently and they accept that risk of devaluation. I don’t play the game that way myself, though at a 100 or 150% transfer bonus, that’s a risk I’m still willing to take because it insulates you somewhat from a major devaluation. Even at 85K miles one way for a partner business class award to Europe, if Turkish had been available at a 150% bonus, just 34,000 transferred points would still be good for a biz class ticket even after the devaluation. Obviously devaluations stink, but even the worst devaluations (and at increases of ~80% one way, I think this qualifies as pretty atrocious) aren’t all that painful if you got a 150% transfer bonus.
And while the increases here from Turkish are outrageous and unreasonable given the challenges of using their program that they haven’t fixed, I don’t think any of us would have predicted that you could count on 45K business class to Europe lasting forever. I would definitely have differing levels of comfort in speculative transfers and Turkish never would have been at the top of my list for speculative transfer (which isn’t to say that I wouldn’t have taken advantage if they were a 75-150% bonus partner, but rather that I’d have used that as a requirement to plan another trip to Hawaii or Europe (and cancel some other trip if need be to make time to take advantage of the elevated value). I mentioned on the podcast that Turkish was the only partner that could have made me somewhat regretful of my decision to move all of our points to Air Canada, but even then I said I wasn’t sure how regretful. I think we mentioned that there’s the problem of points expiring after 3 years and while I didn’t predict an incoming devaluation, I would have been more concerned about the propensity for that with Turkish than with Aeroplan. I could see Air Canada raising award rates, but probably not 80%+.
Of course the core point – that the flexibility of transferable points ultimately keeps you even further protected from the sudden devaluation of any single transfer partner – is sound.
Haven’t looked much at Turkish with not a lot United or *A flights from my home airport but I guess now it’s easy to not bother considering them in the future. With their publicized customer service frustrations and fuel surcharges passed along you had to be getting outsized reward value to make the effort worth it. Now if they are comparable to an Aeroplan or Avianca reward those seem better routes (even with their own call center challenges they never rose to the level of needing a guide on mass emails from Nick).
Stick a fork in this turkey, she’s done!
Turki-yeah
I made several calls to Turkish over the weekend and they suddenly could not see availability I was seeing on Turkish. (I couldn’t book for myself bc trying to travel with a companion, and they still have an error message for me on that option).
I had never booked on Turkish before until yesterday and had never flown them either.
Yesterday, I booked a flight for myself and another person on the same itinerary, and here’s what made it a smooth process for me:
I hope this helps and makes it a smooth process for you.
Thanks, I’m making her FF account and will try again. Did the app show same availability as web? My issue is that the app already allowed me to book a companion but didn’t show the availability. Website shows availability but can’t add companion lol.
Yes for me the app showed the same availability as web. I was booking a flight on Turkish metal. Are you trying to book with a partner airline? Maybe it’s phantom space on the app.
From what I read elsewhere, there are partner and Turkish award pricing at the promotional level. While 65k from 45k to fly to/from anywhere in the US to Turkey is a decent increase, isn’t this still a decent redemption compared to their partners that have higher outright pricing (ie United) or distance-based pricing (ie Aeroplan), especially for West coast flyers? I totally understand the pain for partner awards as this seems not appealing at all, but doesn’t redeeming on Turkish metal still have some value?
Two things:
1) Turkish imposes surcharges (often around $300) on the award ticket, so even if the price were a little less, you would probably prefer booking on Aeroplan unless you hit the 90k band.
2) Avianca will do North America to Istanbul for 63k and less fees. It will also get you routing through IST to Europe without any additive fees. All the programs that transfer to TK also have transfers to Lifemiles.
The only semi-sweet spot left on TK is the domestic United redemptions. Everything else can be done better with another program.
As someone who just secured a 45k booking, I generally don’t disagree. I’m just saying it isn’t the worst deal considering other programs since more options of similar or slightly higher cost. This doesn’t seem like it should be the sole reason to ditch the program entirely especially for someone who has around 65k points, not 90k to redeem.
All that to say this went from a screaming deal to just an ok one.
How much were your taxes?
I did SEA to EDI via IST for ~$285. Not totally unreasonable and pretty similar to a program like Flying Blue which was $222-$244 depending on layover airport. So not VS or BA level taxes to the UK.
OMG that is a +75% detour…. I would not fly this routing in First Class, let alone biz…
Yeah, probably an argument to be made for booking direct if you are going anywhere in Turkey. But those prices with the segment logic are just painful. It just doesn’t make sense unless Turkish is also going the EVA Air route and restricting some of their promotional space to just their program. In that case, it could be marginally useful for people booking 4-6 months out. It will be either a BA flight with $800 in fees, a dynamically priced Flying Blue option around 100k points, and a Turkish flight for 85k.
Please don’t jinx us, but I wouldn’t be surprised if TK does…
Just as I got the status match. I have a cash business ticket booked with Turkish (they had the best price and I was going for status), but now I’m unsure if the Star Alliance status is worth accruing the miles to TA.
I’ve personally experienced the absolute hellscape that is TK’s customer service (Nick used my experience in a post illustrating how bad it can be). Their mileage rates, however, still made it tempting to book, and many people have likely had to run the gauntlet when things go even slightly awry. Minor issues like schedule changes are common for partner bookings, and on TK it can be absolutely maddening to do simple revisions and ticket reissues.
I wonder if this is TKs answer to fixing the customer service required to manage a high volume of low value redemptions. Instead of spending the resources to upgrade IT, train customer service agents and make 2nd tier agents accessible, they’re simply making it unattractive for mileage enthusiasts to transfer and book using their miles. They’ll lose income by not having people transfer to TK, but they know how much they’ll lose, and may have decided that’s easier and less costly than providing the service necessary to handle the demands of mileage optimizers.
What they’re left with is TK captives who already take what they can get from this disaster of an airline loyalty program.
Throw in that availability of premium cabin awards on partners is under pressure. Now, how is one going to use TK?
OMAAT is reporting there’s a definite date for the new charts to kick in.
It also *sounds* like if you want to use Turkish miles for United redemptions, that those will also be drastically higher (when the changes kick in too).
I updated with that date a couple of hours ago at the top of the post.
I was 10 minutes too late. Discovered space for four (!) with $110 taxes each and so I transferred 180,000 miles and went to book. Suddenly, as I was about to book the flights, I got an error, went back and now space just just 3 people is available but what’s worse, taxes are now $1,100 per person. Tried other flights, same result with outrageous taxes… RIP
Apparently on the app the surcharge shows up correctly and there is no error. The space for four is gone, unfortunately.