In 2019, we broke the news on the Turkish Miles & Smiles sweet spot for domestic Star Alliance flights with the revelation that it was possible to book domestic flights on United, including to and from Hawaii and Alaska, for just 7,500 miles each way (originally over the phone or via email and later online). For the past several months, the Turkish Star Alliance booking engine wasn’t working. This morning, when responding to a reader question in our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group, I noticed that the Turkish award booking engine had undergone a small update — and lo and behold, Star Alliance bookings, including United domestic flights to Hawaii for 7500 miles each way, are online once again. As has long been the case, the Turkish online booking tool only shows a small fraction of what should be available, but it’s great to see online bookings back for situations where they are possible.
I won’t rehash everything from our Complete Guide here (click the link above for full details) as the purpose of this post is mostly to alert readers that the Turkish Star Alliance tool is once again working and is now easier to find.
In the past, the button on the Turkish Airlines home page that says “Award ticket – Buy a ticket with Miles” would bring you to a tool that only searched for awards on Turkish metal. However, when clicking that tool this morning to search for an award on Turkish metal, I was surprised to see what looked like a new booking engine with two tabs — one for Award Tickets on Turkish metal and one for Star Alliance award tickets!
I figured that if they put in the time to build the IT to book these two booking engines in one place, perhaps they re-opened Star Alliance bookings online. Indeed they have!
I heavily used the SeatSpy tool to find routes that should have United saver awards available. See our complete review of SeatSpy here.
I started with simple domestic routes like Washington-Dulles to Orlando and I found economy class availability for 7,500 miles and $5.60 as expected.
I next wanted to verify that connecting itineraries still price at 7,500 miles. There has been some confusion about whether or not connecting itineraries are meant to price at 7,500 miles each way based on the wording on the award chart and the fact that itineraries with very long layovers sometimes price as separate awards. To be clear, I have booked plenty of connecting itineraries for 7,500 miles before (including to Hawaii), but with the re-launch of online booking I wanted to verify that connecting itineraries still priced at 7,500 miles one way in economy class. They do.
Finding transcontinental United business class award availability is probably the very definition of finding a needle in a haystack. I never would have found it without SeatSpy (and even then a couple of options that should have been available didn’t show up), but I was able to verify that it is still possible to book domestic business class awards for 12,500 miles each way.
Finding awards to and from Hawaii was significantly tougher, but I can confirm that it is still possible to fly between the contiguous 48 states and Hawaii for 7,500 miles.
And that pricing does hold up on connecting itineraries to Hawaii if you can find them. I had a lot of difficulty finding anything available on connecting itineraries, even on routes where there clearly should have been availability. Still, it isn’t completely impossible.
I recently booked our flights from Anchorage to Chicago for 7,500 miles one-way via email, but now I am once again able to find flights on that route with the Turkish online booking tool for 7,500 miles each way. We loved Alaska and I think this is an awesome deal if you can make the availability work.
A few key notes from my searches so far:
- The actual search tool hasn’t changed, but they have made it easier to find and turned Star Alliance bookings on again.
- Take your time. You’ll have to log in for the Award ticket button to work on the home page, but you have to give it a second after you’ve logged in or else it’ll prompt you to log in again and keep giving you an error. Log in and let it sit on the home page for a second before you do anything. Same with when you click the Star Award tab — you can’t just shoot straight into entering airports, you need to wait a second to go to the page where you enter airport codes (the Turkish metal tool works with airport codes on that tabbed page, but the Star Award tab brings you to the main Star Alliance search tool of old).
- I found no availability at all from Newark on any route I searched. That included both domestic and international whether on United or partners. I didn’t even get the results you see above with specific flights that said “No seats available”, I just got a pop-up saying that no flights were available. I suspect they have Newark blocked.
- I did find other Star Alliance sweet spots on partners like 45,000 miles each way to/from Europe.
- I did find flights between Hawaii and the East Coast, but only on connecting itineraries and it wasn’t easy.
- I imagine that email bookings should still work with flights that you see available via other Star Alliance carriers like Air Canada and ANA. I recently had success with an email booking.
- Flights to Guam still price like North America to Oceania.
- Keep in mind that Turkish no longer offers cheap cancellation — it costs $70 per passenger to cancel an award.
Overall, this is awesome news. It isn’t as good as we would hope in the sense that there are still many flights that should be available but aren’t available to book online, but it’s great to once again see the option to book online when the flight you want is available.
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anyone had success booking an award flight for another person? when i attempted to do so, this popped up “Attention – For Star Alliance award ticket transactions, the ticketing process is not possible for non-members”
during checkout, i keep getting this error message no matter what i do. suggestions?
“Dear passenger,
The name, surname, or date of birth of at least one of the passengers does not match the information registered in the Miles&Smiles account. You can check the information again to continue with the process or continue without logging in to a Miles&Smiles account.”
Nick, any insight into partner awards availability on Air Canada and what are the rules/timelines Air Canada follows?
Turkish and ANA, United aren’t showing any Air Canada availability irrespective of which date I search for both near term and far away. Seems like an Air Canada issue rather than Turkish?
Turkish and ANA, United aren’t showing any Air Canada availability irrespective of which date I search for both near term and far away. Seems like an Air Canada issue rather than Turkish?
[…] Turkish Star Alliance Awards online once again!: Remember when I shared some posts a few weeks ago that detailed the troubles of booking Star Alliance awards with Turkish? Well, good news! It appears that Star Alliance awards are back online. See this post from Frequent Miler. […]
There’s that ugly face unnecessarily on my screen.
Try Ctrl+W (or Command+W on Mac) to get rid of it, works every time!
I’ve tried chrome and bing and get no flights available on star alliance every time for any flight. What search engines work for folks?
Same for me. I found saver awards on the UA site, then tried looking for flights on the TK and I received the same message. Domestic and international. Old search engine and new. Yet I still can’t get anything to show up. Even tried some of the search results Nick showed. Not sure what Nick did to get those results. Delete cookies, incognito, or give it a few days?
I just spent 10 minutes looking for coach award seats from the East Coast of the US to Hawaii on the Turkish website and concluded my chances of winning the Mega Millions Lottery were higher. 🙂 This is still absurd. BTW, does anyone know a way to get Turkish to allow me to book 2 tickets online instead of one? I previously redeemed award tickets for my wife and I and would like to do the same without the additional nonsense of trying to get one of their staff members to help me with it. So I guess I should currently be allowed to do this, not that this reality makes any difference.
BTW, I’m currently booking flights on tiny South American airlines amd that is a million times easier than dealing with Turkish. What the heck is wrong with them? If tiny obscure airlines can operate an online reservation system, why is Turkish entirely incapable of doing so?
Amazing. Just booked cvg-ogg on ua for 15k. Zero issues end to end. Huge thanks
Does Nick have the Midas touch?
I read these columns and get optimistic but I’ve never once been able to book, or even see, a Star Alliance award ticket via TK from ATL. I’ve found United saver awards from other tools but even when I try those days I get errors from the TK site (it often wants to route me from ATL to IST then to my domestic destination SFO hypothetically, WTH?). What am I missing??
Oh and I’m not a complete noob (i.e., I’ve booked an ANA RTW award)…
If it wants to route you via IST, then you’re not using the Star Alliance search tool.
Well I stand corrected. I just ran a search for ATL-SFO and I see what you mean. So weird!
Turkish Airlines never showed any availability for Air Canada flights? Has that been fixed in any way or form?
I’ve never had an issue with Turkish displaying Air Canada availability for the handful of routes I periodically search (ORD-YUL and ORD-YVR). Maybe the airport/routes you’re searching for are blocked (as seems to be the case with EWR and East Coast-Hawaii nonstop flights).
Search is working, but payment page is not. Tried 6 different flights on both Chrome and Edge and the payment page is glitched out. If anyone else is seeing something different please post here. Got some miles to use before they expire at the end of the year.
Same exact issue here
One question is when i try to search for 4 passengers it says I have to book primary member first, it does no even look for availability for 4 people. How do you get around that. Thanks Raghu
How do you book for your family? Do they need their own turkish account?
I’ve long been able to book for the rest of my family online without an issue. I don’t know why some people can’t. In my case, my very first booking was for me to fly by myself (made over the phone). Then I followed that a few days later with an email booking for my wife, first son, her sister, and her sister’s husband to fly on an itinerary a few days before my actual travel. This was all before Turkish implemented their online booking tool. Ever since we first saw the online booking tool, I’ve been able to add companions within my Turkish account and add them to a booking.
nevermind. found it!
https://frequentmiler.com/booking-a-turkish-miles-smiles-award-for-a-friend/
Unless you also have a Turkish speaking friend you may find this to be a very frustrating exercise. First, you must add your companions to your account, and this is easily done. But in contrast to Nick’s lucky experience, for me, booking for my family or anyone else that I’ve added as a companion is a nightmare. I’m not a rookie at this and yes I’ve booked for myself first as required. Booking for myself has never been an issue but wow is it a mess for companions. And this was a problem more than once. I’ve also had the experience of repeated calls and HUCAs to Turkish airlines for help, only to have the agents tell me there was no award availability when there clearly was. It took a call to Turkey with a Turkish-speaking friend to get my three companions booked using my points on Turkish airlines. I’d also recommend you be careful about transferring points to Turkish even if you see award seats because it is very much YMMV and my experience is not an anomaly. You have to decide if the mileage/points savings are worth the grief.
In before the “never dealing / too much work with Turkish” comments. Keep owning that Turkish corner, Nick, we appreciate it.