Turkish Miles & Smiles Complete Guide (increased change fee; Citi transfers now instant)

A few years ago, we were the first blog to uncover the killer story with Turkish Miles & Smiles that you can fly one-way within the United States — including to/from Alaska and Hawaii — for just 7,500 miles one-way in economy class or 12,500 miles in business/first class when United has saver availability. That amazing sweet spot is one of several great award deals offered by Turkish. Miles & Smiles is simultaneously one of the most valuable and one of the most frustrating Star Alliance programs given the challenges you may face in booking the itinerary you want. However, when you can find the availability you need, there is no doubt that the sweet spots can be well worth the challenges you may encounter in booking.

Things to know about Turkish Miles & Smiles award booking

1. Book via email or over the phone if you can’t online: While some itineraries can be booked online, many itineraries don’t show up on the Turkish website. In those cases, you’ll need to either email or call to book over the phone with Turkish Miles & Smiles at 1-800-874-8875. Note that phone agents often have trouble finding availability. Email bookings still work, so try the email process detailed in this guide if you strike out on the phone (or maybe just start with email if time is on your side). Note that you may want to send the same email to multiple ticket offices because some offices may not respond.
2. Connecting itineraries are OK: Award pricing is per direction regardless of segments (i.e. EWR-HNL is 7.5K one way in economy class. EWR-ORD-LAX-HNL is also 7.5K one way in economy even though there are 2 stops provided the layovers don’t exceed maximum connection times).
3. Irregular Operations can be a major headache. If your flight is cancelled by United or there is a significant schedule change, you may be in for a large headache because United likely won’t be able to help and you’ll be stuck calling Miles & Smiles and hoping they can reissue your ticket. This is the main risk in booking via Turkish.
4. The award chart no longer shows the sweetest spot. Turkish used to include a snippet in its award chart indicating that domestic Star Alliance awards cost 7.5K each way in economy class or 12.5K each way in business class. However, they eliminated that snipped in 2019. Awards from “North America” to “North America” are listed in the award chart at 10K each way in economy class or 15K in business class. In practice, international awards within North America follow that pricing, but entirely domestic awards, such as those on United Airlines within the United States, continue to price according to the old domestic award chart snippet both online and via email. The same is true for domestic Star Alliance flights in other countries (like within India on Air India or within Germany of Lufthansa, etc).
5. Award holds: Turkish will give you a hold for 48 hours if booking more than 7 days in advance, so there is no need to transfer before putting an award on hold in most cases.
6. Transfer times: Bilt Rewards and Capital One miles transfer instantly. Citi ThankYou points used to take 18-30 hours, but a recent data point indicates that they are now instant. You can alternatively transfer from Marriott Rewards, but the transfer time is likely to be a week or more.
7. When you create an account, your password must be numbers only and 6 digits long.
8. No mixed cabin bookings in most cases: You can not combine an itinerary with some legs in business class and others in economy class. An exception from the program rules is that per the terms it is possible to book a mixed-cabin award in cases where one of your flights does not have a matching class of service (e.g. one leg has business class but the other leg is operated by a small regional plane with no business class cabin). However, YMMV — the online tool does not yet show these itineraries.
9. Fuel surcharges are passed on. You’ll want to choose airlines with low/no fuel surcharges and/or departure cities that limit them. United has no fuel surcharges.
10. United Airlines “Saver” availability only: If you’re looking to book United flights with Turkish Miles & Smiles, you must find United saver availability. Only United saver availability is bookable with partner miles. You can not book segments operated by Hawaiian with Turkish miles. You can not use Turkish miles to book award seats that are only available to United credit card holders or United elite members — only saver availability that you see when not logged in to a United account will be available to Turkish. Cross-reference availability with another Star Alliance carrier, like Air Canada, to see which flights should be available to partners.
11. International first class is not bookable on the Turkish website and may not be available via phone or email. While Turkish added first class redemptions to its award chart, we only see economy and business class booking options on the website. According to Flyertalk, Turkish is unable to book first class awards.
12. The cancellation fee is now $70: The fee to cancel and redeposit used to be only $25 per passenger, but Turkish quietly increased it to $70 according to this page. The mileage redeposit is sometimes instant. Note that changes theoretically also cost $70, but in my experience it was easier to cancel & re-book. Note also that numerous readers have reported free cancellation when due to a significant schedule change. In the past, bookings made on the website were easily cancellable online, but you may need to call.
13. Many available routes don’t show up online. It’s not clear why, but many itineraries that are available at United.com do not show up on the Turkish Airlines website. In these cases, you should be able to book via email.
14. Not all routes price correctly online. Most domestic US itineraries now price at 7,500 miles each way in economy class online. Some price at over 11K online for no known reason (the same itineraries can be booked over the phone or via email for 7,500 miles each way).
15. The online tool often doesn’t show the most direct routing. Even when direct flights are available, the system sometimes forces a connection (for example, rather than allowing a nonstop round trip award between San Francisco and Honolulu, the options presented required connecting through Los Angeles or vice versa). It is often possible to book the nonstop routings via email.
16. You can not book tickets for others until you have booked a ticket for yourself. This might mean that you’ll need to book yourself and traveling companions under separate reservations. It may also be possible to make yourself a “dummy” booking that you will later cancel in order to unlock the ability to book for others. Note that some people have had difficulty booking for others even after completing a booking for themselves. YMMV.
17. You might be able to book tickets for others on the Turkish Airlines website, but YMMV and you must first add others as your companions. In the past, the online system would not allow me to make a booking for my wife and son (without me) using my miles. However, I have since been able to book for friends on a trip where I wasn’t a traveler, so YMMV. It is also possible to book travel for others over the phone and via email even when the member booking is not traveling. Note that to book a ticket online that includes you the member and other passengers on the same itinerary, you must go to “My personal details” and “My Companions” and add traveling companions there before booking (this is not necessary for phone or email bookings).
18. There are fantastic sweet spots connecting other regions. If you’re piecing together a multi-region trip, it’s worth a look at the full Turkish Miles & Smiles award chart. Note that you want to see the “Promotional Award Ticket Table” for Star Alliance awards. There are some fantastic values, particularly between Europe and regions East (27.5K in business class to Central Asia, 45K to the Far East, and 52.5K to Oceania all come to mind). See also the region definitions as some regions are quite large.

Turkish Miles & Smiles Economy Class Sweet Spots

Asia / Far East for 45K each way

Caribbean from 7.5K each way

Central Asia for 34K each way

Middle East for 32K each way

North America from 7.5K each way

Hawaii for 7.5K each way

Turkish Miles & Smiles Premium Cabin Sweet Spots

Africa from 60K each way

Asia / Far East for 67.5K business / 100K first

Caribbean from 12.5K each way

Central Asia for 52.5K business / 72K first

Europe for 45K business / 67.5K first

Hawaii for 12.5K each way

Middle East for 47K business / 69.5K first

North America for 12.5K business

South America for 35K if originating in the Caribbean

Getting Turkish Miles & Smiles miles

You can of course earn Turkish Miles & Smiles miles by crediting Star Alliance flights to Turkish. Wheretocredit.com is a terrific resource for determining your earnings for paid flights.

For those who prefer to earn / generate miles without flying, there are several options.

Bilt Rewards (instant transfer)

Turkish Miles & Smiles is a 1:1 Bilt Rewards transfer partner. Simply open your Bilt Rewards app, link your Turkish Miles & Smiles account, and transfer.

Note that Blue members (those with no Bilt Rewards status) must transfer in increments of 2,000 points.

Transfers from Bilt Rewards are instant.

Capital One Miles (instant transfer)

Turkish Miles & Smiles is a 1: 1 Capital One transfer partner. Simply log in to your Capital One miles-earning account and click “redeem rewards” and then “convert rewards” to transfer in increments of 100 miles (with a minimum transfer of 1,000 miles).

Transfers from Capital One are instant.

Citi ThankYou Points (not instant transfer)

Turkish Miles & Smiles is a 1:1 Citi Transfer Partner. Simply log in to ThankYou.com and transfer your points to Turkish Miles & Smiles like you would with any airline partner.

Transfers from Citi now appear to be instant. Transfer times used to vary from 18-30 hours, but a recent data point indicates they are now instant. You should easily receive the miles in time to ticket your held award provided you initiate the transfer right away after placing the hold.

Citi did provide a transfer bonus to Turkish Miles & Smiles once in 2018. Hopefully we will see that return.

Marriott Bonvoy

You can alternatively / additionally transfer Marriott Bonvoy points to Turkish Miles & Smiles at a rate of 3 Marriott points to 1 Turkish Airlines mile. When you transfer 60,000 Marriott points, you’ll get a 5K bonus for a total of 25K Turkish miles. Unfortunately, Marriott transfers are slow and may take a week or more. You can’t count on a transfer from Marriott processing while you have an award on hold.

Buy miles from Turkish

Turkish Miles & Smiles will sell you up to 50,000 miles for 3 cents per mile. These miles post instantly to your account, so this can be a way to top off your account for a valuable award. Turkish processes these transactions directly, so mileage purchases appear like ordinary airline charges.

Buy Citi ThankYou points

As long as you have a card that earns Citi ThankYou points, and you have at least one point in your account, you can buy additional ThankYou points for 2.5 cents each, up to a maximum of 100K points per year.  You can then transfer those points to airline miles.  Greg wrote about this in detail a while ago: Buy miles via ThankYou Rewards. He then wrote a post about doing it specifically for award to Hawaii. See: $386 to Hawaii round trip from anywhere in the US.

Step-by-step guide to booking Turkish Miles & Smiles award tickets

Turkish Miles & Smiles sweet spots can be a terrific deals in many cases provided you know how to find and book awards and you are prepared to deal with irregular operations. Unfortunately, if United cancels your flight or it undergoes a significant schedule change, you are likely in for some headache in getting in touch with Turkish and getting their help reissuing your ticket. This potential difficulty means that booking via Turkish is not for the faint of heart.

That said, finding and booking awards is not as difficult as it once was. Follow the steps below to book.

Check United.com for saver availability

It is easiest to start your search at United.com (note: do not log in to your United account) for your preferred date and route looking for saver award availability for United-operated flights. Only saver awards can be booked with partner miles. (Note that any Star Alliance partner awards shown on United.com should also be available to Turkish Miles & Smiles).

Note that Turkish can not book seats that are only available to United credit card holders or elite members. Your best bet is to make sure you are not logged in at United.com when searching because if you log in you may see expanded availability that Turkish can not book.

Check the Turkish Airlines website

Once you’ve found saver availability via United, you can try searching the same date via the Turkish Airlines website. As we’ve previously noted is the case with the Turkish Airlines website, availability shown online via Turkish Miles & Smiles is very much hit or miss. The good news is that you will find some good options easily bookable online (and awards are once again bookable online now that the checkout button has been restored). The bad news is that you will not see all of the bookable options on the website.

Unlike other airline websites, 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 Alliance Award Ticket booking engine.

When you click the calendar to select dates, you can 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.

If you receive a message that no flights are available, this does not always mean that no awards are available. Assuming you have found saver Star Alliance availability via United.com or the Aeroplan website, you should be able to book that space by phone or email. Note that sometimes agents don’t see availability that should be there, so it may take multiple tries to book successfully. While I’ve at times gotten an agent able to book on my first call, other times it has taken many calls or a copy/paste email to multiple ticket offices to get a ticket booked. I find it far less frustrating to book via email.

Calling Turkish Airlines to book via phone

The key to phone bookings with Turkish Miles & Smiles is that you must feed the agent each segment separately. (Alternatively, the email process still works. See this post for instructions on booking via email). If you choose to call, expect that the agent probably won’t be able to help you and be pleasantly surprised if they can.

To book a United Airlines award ticket over the phone with Turkish Miles & Smiles, follow these steps:

1. Call 1-800-874-8875
2. Press 1 to continue in English
3. Press 1 because you’re a Miles & Smiles member
4. Enter your Miles & Smiles number
5. Press 1 to confirm your number is correct
6. Press 4 for reservations

When you call Turkish Airlines to book an award ticket over the phone, you will need to be prepared to tell the agent exactly which flights you want and then feed the agent one segment at a time.

For example, if you’re looking to fly from Chicago to Honolulu with a layover in San Francisco, you’ll need to be very specific:

“I’d like to book a partner flight on United airlines. There are 2 segments. The first flight is from Chicago (ORD) to San Francisco (SFO) on October 22nd for 2 passengers in economy class. I’m looking for flight UA 1891 leaving Chicago at 10am and arriving at 12:50pm in San Francisco.”

Let the agent find that flight. Then, move on to the next flight.

“The second segment is from San Francisco (SFO) to Honolulu (HNL) on October 22nd for 2 passengers in economy class. I’m looking for flight UA 300 leaving San Francisco at 2:10pm.”

If you instead just ask for Chicago to Honolulu, the agent will likely tell you that there is no availability (unless there is a nonstop flight available). You have to go segment by segment and also keep in mind that agents often can’t see availability that should be there. Be prepared to hang up and call again multiple times (or try via email).

Keep in mind that the max layover on domestic itineraries appears to be 4 hours for tickets booked via phone or email. If your itinerary has a longer layover, you’ll be charged for two awards. The online booking tool sometimes returns results with longer layovers priced as a single award.

Book a Turkish Miles & Smiles award via email

Turkish Airlines operates ticket offices in 9 US cities and 2 Canadian cities and all around the world. They publish contact information all of their ticket offices on their website here. Be sure to choose “Ticket Sales Office” rather than “Airport Sales Office” or something like that.

Here is an example email template that I use.

Hello,

I’m emailing to inquire about a Star Alliance award booking. I would like to book the following itinerary:

Passenger: [Name]

Miles & Smiles Number: XXXXXX

Date: February 12, 2021

Class: Economy

Origin: IAD

Destination: LAS

Segments:

1) UA 632 12NOV IAD-LAX 1230 1456

2) UA 2365 12NOV LAX-LAS 1631 1745

Can you confirm the number of miles required and the total taxes & fees and help me place this award on hold?

I really appreciate your assistance!

Sincerely,

[Name]

Note that some offices will not respond to your email. You’ll need some trial and error: some offices almost never respond and others are more reliable. Since this varies all the time, your best bet is to just send the same email to multiple offices (note that in the past, when specific responsive offices have been widely publicized, they have inevitably become non-responsive shortly thereafter). Keep in mind that most of the ticket offices are open 9am-5pm Monday through Friday, so you may not get a response after hours / on weekends and/or you may need to try an office in a different area.

When booking via email, Turkish requires all of the following paperwork (but read on afterwards for the work-around):

1. Miles & Smiles redemption form: This is a form that includes the basic route and price information and asks you to indicate the type of award (i.e. an award ticket on Star Alliance Flights). You’ll sign this form.
2. Credit card authorization form. This form has your PNR and fare information. It also asks for date of birth, email address, phone number, driver’s license number, credit card information, and signature of the booking member.
3. Photos of your credit card (both front and back). Be aware that you may need to crop / resize your photos (my email kept bouncing back saying that the ticket office box was full and the message was undeliverable, but it turned out that my files were too large).
4. Photo of your ID. I provided both front and back.

Note that I have alternatively had success putting an award on hold via email and then calling to pay for taxes and ticket the award without a need for any of the above paperwork.

Putting an award on hold

Turkish Miles & Smiles allows award holds when booking via phone or email. Once an agent finds your flights, you will need to ask them to put the itinerary on hold for you to transfer over the miles (since Turkish allows free and easy holds there is no reason to transfer miles before this point). The agent will need to take the names and birth dates of the passengers in your party to put it on hold.

Provided you are booking travel at least 7 days in advance, you will be offered a hold of 48 hours, which is plenty of time to transfer the miles necessary. Note that transfers from Bilt Rewards and Capital One are instant, but transfers from Citi ThankYou points take 18-30 hours.

If you are booking a flight within 7 days of travel, you will only get a hold for 24 hours. Citi points may transfer in that window, but Bilt or Capital One would be safer bets within 7 days of travel.

Once your itinerary is on hold, you’ll want to transfer the miles to pay for your award. As noted above, if an office puts your award on hold via email, you can simply call Miles & Smiles and give them the PNR from the email and pay to ticket over the phone.

Calling to ticket

Once you have the miles necessary in your account, you’ll need to call back to ticket your held award.

The process is pretty straightforward: you’ll call Turkish again and tell them that you need to pay for an award you have on hold. You’ll give them the PNR you were given when you put your tickets on hold and they will verify all of the information. The agent will then transfer you to an automated system to enter your credit card information. After you enter credit card info, the agent came will verify the first 4 and last 4 digits of the card number and your Miles & Smiles number and then transfer you to an automated prompt to enter your Miles & Smiles PIN. That “PIN” is the password for your account (which you likely remember is a six-digit number). Once that is complete, the award will be ticketed. Note that unlike searching for award space, ticketing a reservation once you have it on hold is very easy and shouldn’t require more than one call.

Change / cancellation fee for Turkish award tickets

Changes before check-in will incur a $70 fee (the ticket must be used within 1 year of the day it is issued). Itineraries can be canceled over the phone and miles are immediately re-deposited. Note that many readers have reported paying no cancellation fee when cancellation is due to significant schedule changes.

Turkish Miles & Smiles expiration policy

Turkish Miles & Smiles miles expire 3 years after they are earned. Transferring more miles to Turkish does not extend validity of your existing miles.

You can pay a fee of $10 per 1,000 miles to extend miles for another 3 years, though at 1c per mile, that is quite expensive. It is best to avoid transferring unless confident you will use the miles within 3 years.

That said, it can be worth paying to extend the miles if they are about to expire and you are very confident you will use them. For instance, the fee to extend 15,000 miles for 3 more years is $150. Given that 15K Turkish miles can get you a round trip ticket to Hawaii, it certainly may be worth paying $150 to extend the miles rather than allowing them to expire.

To extend your miles online, simply log in to your account, click your name to expand the menu, go to “Miles Transactions” and find the button to “Protect miles”.

On the next page, you can choose how many miles to protect and see the fee.

Again, that can be worthwhile. It’s nice that Turkish allows you to choose to protect an amount less than your entire balance.

Turkish Miles & Smiles Elite Status

Turkish Miles & Smiles sometimes matches status for those with oneworld status. See Status Matcher for recent data pounts.

For those looking to earn status the old fashioned way, here are the tiers and requirements:

Note that you’ll want to check wheretocredit.com before choosing to credit your flights to Turkish to be sure that they are eligible to earn the miles you expect.

One key benefit of elite status may be the ability to pool family miles.

Bottom line

Turkish Miles & Smiles has some fantastic award chart sweet spots. However, they can also easily be the most frustrating program given the inexplicable difficulty in booking awards in some circumstances. The award sweet spots can be worth the challenge for those who don’t mind making a few phone calls or sending a few emails when necessary.

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