Turkish Miles & Smiles has gotten a lot of attention over the past year thanks to the incredible sweet spot we uncovered for domestic awards (See: How to book United with Turkish Miles & Smiles miles). However, Turkish has another awesome sweet spot in its award chart that is worth a look for those planning travel to Europe: 45K miles one-way in business class on Star Alliance carriers to and from Europe. You’ll want to avoid certain carriers with high fuel surcharges, but that’s a relative steal for carriers without fuel surcharges or those with moderate fees. Since Tukish is a 1:1 Citi transfer partner and you can earn 2x ThankYou points everywhere with the Citi Double Cash when paired with a premium card, this is a sweet spot worth your attention.
Sweet spot spotlight
- The short story: Turkish Miles & Smiles charges 45K miles each way for business class on Star Alliance carriers between North America and Europe.
- Miles required: 45,000 Turkish Miles & Smiles miles in business class
- Award availability: Varies, but generally pretty good given the number of Star Alliance carriers that fly to Europe
- How to find awards: Search united.com or Turkish Airlines
- How to book awards: Book online at Turkish if you find your preferred routing or potentially over the phone or via email
Booking with Turkish Miles & Smiles online for Star Alliance awards
As we’ve previously noted is the case with the Turkish Airlines website, availability shown online is very much hit or miss. The good news is that you will find some good options easily bookable online. The bad news is that you will not see all of the bookable options on the website. As an example, I inexplicably couldn’t find any itineraries involving TAP Air Portugal on the transatlantic sector (but could find them involving TAP for flights within Europe).
Key to finding availability online begins with knowing where to search. Unlike United.com, you will not start your search on the Turkish Airlines homepage, rather you’ll want to log in to your Turkish Miles & Smiles account and then click the drop-down from your name and choose “Miles transactions”.
You can then find the “Star alliance award ticket” booking engine to the right of your name.
Clicking “book now” will bring you to the Star Award Ticket booking engine.
When you click the calendar to select dates, you will now find a box to easily search for one-way awards, which is likely the easiest way to search.
After searching, if awards are available in both economy class and business class, you will see radio buttons to select which class of service you would like to see displayed.
While Turkish’s economy class pricing is similar to most other Star Alliance airlines at 30K each way, business class is a standout value to and from Europe at 45K miles each way.
Turkish Miles & Smiles search tool good news and bad news
The online search tool is a mix of good news and bad news.
The good news is that you can find Star Alliance flights bookable online. For example, here is New York to Warsaw in business class:
Unfortunately, the tool doesn’t show all available flights. For example, from New York JFK they show four itineraries in economy class on the same sample date.
United shows options operated by Swiss and Austrian out of JFK.
Out of Newark, United shows dozens of options, whereas Turkish only showed the direct flight on LOT polish. This is a clear limitation that proved frustrating over hours of searching. You may want to just search for what you want at United and then see if you get lucky and it’s bookable online with Turkish (and if not, just send an email or try the phone).
Good news here is that the options you see available at United.com should likely be bookable via email with Turkish Miles & Smiles. You may also have success booking over the phone (we recently had a success report from a reader who was able to book a trip to Hawaii on United over the phone). Keep in mind that you’ll need to feed phone agents your desired flights one segment at a time if you’re able to book over the phone.
Still, the search tool shows some of the nonstop options to Europe and randomly has connecting itineraries. YMMV.
Fuel surcharges really range with Turkish miles
Turkish Airlines passes along fuel surcharges, but these are mostly painful on Lufthansa Group flights (Lufthansa, Swiss, Brussels, and Austrian). Fuel surcharges on other airlines range from none to moderate.
For example, New York to London on United rings in at 45K miles and $5.60.
Tacking on a flight to Zurich on Swiss brings the cash total up to $98.
But if you’d like to fly direct from New York to Zurich on Swiss, fuel surcharges zip up to $674.50 one way on a business class flight (or about $224 in economy class).
Other Star Alliance carriers can be entirely reasonable in terms of fuel surcharges. For example, JFK to Warsaw on LOT Polish in business class comes with just $84.50 in taxes and fees. The same was true from other US cities like Chicago.
Interestingly, United shows 6 seats available on a number of those LOT Polish flights.
The Turkish website will only allow you to search for up to 5 adults at a time, but I didn’t have a hard time finding room for five out of Chicago, either.
Someone cue up my friend Spencer Howard for an award alert from Straight to the Points.
Depending of course on where you originate, fees on the way back can also be quite reasonable.
Interestingly, if you build in a stop in Istanbul connecting on Turkish Airlines, you’ll see that it advertises “touristanbul” during the layover.
That brings you to this page with information about free stopover tours. Apparently you can not combine a free stopover tour with a free hotel stay, but I’d definitely be interested in the free tour with a 6+-hour layover. And connecting in Istanbul only adds about 100 Euros in this case for what I expect is likely an even better business class experience and a tour of Istanbul.
Flying via Canada is also a reasonable option, with taxes and fees from Toronto to London ringing in at $54.16 CAD.
For Turkish-only awards, start at the home page
While the above results represent Star Alliance options, and you will find mixed-carrier options that include Turkish airlines with that tool, you’ll want to start in a different place if you’re looking for options entirely on Turkish metal. For those searches, start on the home page and tick the box for “Award flight”.
That tool will show itineraries entirely on Turkish, like this one from Chicago to Istanbul for 45K plus $170.50.
Adding a connection will add additional fees, but in some cases you can easily build in a 20-hour stop in Istanbul for not much more.
The Middle East isn’t much more with Turkish Miles & Smiles
Keep in mind that if you’re interested in travel to The Middle East, it doesn’t cost much more to get there. For instance, you can fly to Dubai for just 2,000 miles more — a total of 47K and $234.30 on Turkish.
But that’s another story for another day.
Bottom line
Turkish Miles & Smiles has gotten a lot of coverage due to the amazing sweet spot for domestic Star Alliance flights. However, they also offer one of the best deals to Europe in business class if you can fly a carrier that is not owned by Lufthansa. At 45K miles and none-to-moderate in terms of fuel surcharges, you have a lot of decent options between the US and Europe. Getting the online tool to find your desired itinerary will be a matter of luck, but if you don’t find what you are looking for online, getting it ticketed via email should be possible (and perhaps phone will work, too). For those curious, I have not gone through with booking for others online (you need to set up “My Companions” in your account in order to add others to a booking similar to how Singapore requires you to name “nominees”), but I have booked flights for family members via email without issue. With some of those LOT Polish itineraries showing availability for a team of people in business class, this could be a great way to get the whole family to and from Europe.
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[…] yesterday morning’s post (Turkish miles: 45K each way for business class to Europe [sweet spot spotlight]), I noted how you can fly to or from Europe in business class for 45K miles each way on Star […]
Hey, this is a great article. I am interested in exploring flights from CPT to IAH via IST. But I have encountered two things. 1 – I cannot seem to find the Promo Business price and the “weekly chart” is not working.
Any idea how I could explore more days to see if I can get a cheap Biz Class from CPT to IAH? I replicated your sample itineraries above and I did get the Chicago – Ist for 45K miles, but when I change that to IAH-IST (Same date) I do not get the promo price, so I am having difficulties exploring other dates, unless I do it one by one.
Thanks
Did you mention the email address if we need to contact Turkish via email?
Also, how does the email booking process work? Do we need to feed them each individual flight segment and then they respond with what the total price will be and we say yay or nay? Seems like this could get complicated since fuel surcharge vary so you don’t really know what your total price is going to be.
Also, do you have a list regarding which airlines incur fuel surcharges and which do not?
Thanks!
Thank you for this sweet spot highlight, Nick. I always find these types of posts useful.
Most of your examples have flights departing from the East coast and Chicago. Are flights departing from west coast (such as LAX) the same price? 45,000 miles?
Thank again.
I’m going through Turkish’s official award chart and these rates are for their “Promotional award ticket table”. Do you know when this promo ends?
It’s not a promotion. That’s the name for their partner award chart as opposed to their anytime award chart which they called guaranteed seat or something like that.
Got it. Thanks for clarifying.
Do you need to already have Turkish miles? I have miles on United and Chase Ultimate Rewards points. Can those be transferred? When I search on United I don’t see any option to use Turkish Airlines.
This is regarding the Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles program. If you have your miles on United account, you can use them only through that program which has different rules, i.e. 60k miles one-way to Europe in business on United or 70k for the partner airlines, such as Turkish.
Turkish is a 1:1 Citi transfer partner. You would need to have Citi Thank You points to transfer to Turkish.
@Nick Reyes
I got a mailer for my Citi Premier and my AAdvantage biz card.
Offering 2,500 TYP or 2,500 AA miles
5X TYP first $500 @ Clothing stores, Dept. Stores toy stores AND Computer & Electronic stores
5X AA first $500 @ Computer & Electronic stores
1) Does Newegg MCC code as “Computer & Electronic stores”?
That is the only place i can see reasonable MS is buying GC/VGC/MCGC from Newegg? Since R’US stores went Bankrupt.
TIA
Did you find out what the MCC is for Newegg?
Hey Nick, thanks for the great post!
Here is my dilemma…
Planning a trip in August 2022 to Venice, Florence, and Rome. P1 and P2 intentionally opened the Citi Premier to top off our AA miles for this trip. We each now have 90k TYP but was planning to transfer to AA this week. I found some main cabin flights for 55k on AA that work well but I would love to explore Turkish Business class if I can find it. I can reposition to anywhere in the US but would be starting on the West Coast.
Is there a route map I can see so I know what departure cities to check that fly to VCE or FCO? Is there an easy way to start besides trying every major hub in the US and every major hub in or close to Italy? How would you start? I’ve looked on United, Air Canada, Iberia, etc.
With the TYP transfer to AA probably ending on the 13th, should I just transfer to AA and book the main cabin flights? Is business class on Turkish feasible to Italy or is it like trying to find that last Easter egg hidden “somewhere in the backyard”? Any insight or advise would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
What about booking LH F?
Thanks.
LH F has an amazingly low required mileage amount with only 67.5k one way. The problem is, besides that LH usually does not open up F space for any Star Alliance partners until 14 days out, that you have to pay fuel surcharges. These are so high that you’re better off transferring your Citi TYP to Lifemiles and booking it there for 87k without the fuel surcharges.
Right, I agree with all that… but can Turkish actually book it?
Do they have the same access to LH F as United or only reduced access like LifeMiles?
The latest I’ve heard is that Lifemiles is showing (once again) the same LH F seats as UA. There were rumors that Lifemiles in the past has restricted themselves because they had to pay LH F and Air China F the most amount of cash from all the popular award redemptions and were trying to avoid that by just showing a very limited award availability.
No Greggy today?
I have plans to tour Europe for the month of June, but I am dead scared about the coronavirus! I am in great health, but I don’t want to get quarantined and get sent back in the plane from hell.
What is your take? Are you or Greggy going to Europe anytime soon or do you guys have travel plans already booked? One thing I do know, is that you are not going to Asia this year?
Greg is always working on something, whether behind the scenes or a post on the site. But as to the pattern, I do the Tuesday and Thursday morning posts. Greg does M-W-F. That enables us to split up- other tasks and to put the proper focus on the posts each morning. So have no fear — Greg will be back with tomorrow’s morning post and you never know when he may have something else in the pipeline.
As to coronavirus, it’s hard to say. This year is the first time I can remember in years and years that I haven’t had a single international flight booked. That’s due to a combination of a previously-planned slowdown after a year filled with a lot of travel in 2019 and in part due to uncertainty over coronavirus. We had been talking about a possible spring-time trip to Europe in my household when the virus developed in China. We don’t feel more compelled to book something today than we did a month ago when that idea was first floated, so we haven’t made any moves one way or another.
At the end of the day, the mathematical risk based on what we currently know seems low. At the same time, we (meaning my family) don’t have any need to book a trip right now and there is a lot of uncertainty. I’m happy to kick back and collect points for the time being and see what happens over the next couple of months.
Again, that’s not because I’m convinced that there is a high risk but rather because I’m not yet convinced that the risk is low enough for my taste. What gives me pause is the fact that medical professionals who spend a career caring for the sick and diseased (and thus surely know the proper preventative measures and are surely taking them in order to protect themselves and other patients) have still contracted this one and a few have died. That makes me wonder what we don’t yet know about transmission, incubation, and prevention. Of course, as someone with zero medical background, I don’t know anything about those factors myself, hence my wait-and-see approach.
To be clear, I’m not saying I won’t travel to Europe or elsewhere this year. But I’m not in a hurry to book because I don’t need to go. Between whatever risk there exists in terms of infection and the compounded risk of further travel restrictions (such as being in a city that gets locked down or not being allowed to enter country X because of a stamp from country Y in my passport or a forced quarantine period when returning home), booking a leisure trip to Europe just doesn’t feel necessary for me today. I think my greatest “fear” is ending up in the sort of quarantine situation where I’m forced into close quarters with someone is incubating and not symptomatic / positive yet but carrying. Of course, that could happen with the flu here when I go to a New York City musical this weekend or when Greg and I speak at FTU and the Travel & Adventure Show in Washington DC next weekend, so I’m aware that I am accepting lots of other risks in my day-to-day life that may be as serious or worse (or equally may not materialize into any problem whatsoever).
But circling back to today’s post, I thought it was still worth publishing this because (provided Turkish doesn’t change the award chart) this will still be a great deal to keep in mind this July when you’re booking summer travel for June 2021 and you can now hopefully plan your point collecting accordingly. I know there are also plenty of people who will say that I’m being overly cautious in my travel planning (and may well be correct) and who will still travel to Europe (and Asia for that matter) this year, so this is a deal worth highlighting for those who do. Also note that Turkish only charges $25 per passenger to cancel — so if you book this, the risk is relatively low provided you can find a future use of Turkish miles.
Longer answer than you likely expected, but that’s my take.
JB
Ur the lucky one my Venice is May 15 I’ll just cancel a couple days before .Then there’s the Geek Islands 9/1 . This is all the blogs fault if they didn’t teach me to travel cheaply I would have Stayed Home HaHa . I think there’s Brain Swelling on that stuff too as in damage so choose wisely not by Wallet .
CHEERs