The Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles program has eliminated what I’d consider to be one of the last sweet spots of the program…
In this post:
Turkish Miles&Smiles hikes domestic partner award rates
In 2024, Turkish Miles&Smiles massively devalued award rates for travel on Turkish Airlines. Fortunately partner award costs weren’t impacted, leaving a limited number of sweet spots.
As flagged by LoyaltyLobby, unfortunately the program has now devalued its single best partner award redemption opportunity, impacting domestic redemptions within any country.
Prior to the change, you could fly one-way domestically within any country for 10,000 miles in economy, 15,000 miles in business class, or 20,000 miles in first class. Being able to spend just 15,000 miles for a domestic United first class flight (since it uses the “I” fare class, which is for business class) was an astonishingly good value, especially when you consider that it could get you as far as Hawaii.
Unfortunately that pricing no longer applies. To start, award costs for domestic travel have been increased by 50% across the board:
- Economy now costs 15,000 miles, compared to 10,000 miles previously
- Business class now costs 22,500 miles, compared to 15,000 miles previously
- First class now costs 30,000 miles, compared to 20,000 miles previously
On top of that, the program has created a special award chart for domestic flights to and from Hawaii, which now have the following pricing:
- Economy now costs 25,000 miles, compared to 10,000 miles previously
- Business class now costs 40,000 miles, compared to 15,000 miles previously
- First class now costs 50,000 miles, compared to 20,000 miles previously
This change is disappointing but not surprising
When the Turkish Miles&Smiles program was devalued in early 2024, it became pretty clear that Turkish wasn’t interested in offering compelling redemption values. The program’s approach to devaluing miles was also pretty unsophisticated, if you ask me, since Turkish makes the same saver award space available to members of its own program as it does to members of partner programs.
So if you’re going to partner with transferable points currencies, it seems silly to essentially encourage people not to participate in “your” program.
With that in mind, I was a bit surprised that Turkish didn’t immediately devalue its sweet spot partner awards at the time, so it’s also not surprising to see that happening now. Obviously I hate to see it, but it was also going to happen sooner or later.
I think what’s even worse is that the program hasn’t even announced this change — it simply updated its award chart, without even any note of the pricing having been updated. Also, as a percentage increase, this devaluation is brutal, going from requiring 15,000 miles to 40,000 miles. Then again, even at 40,000 miles, that pricing is still fairly competitive. 
Bottom line
The Turkish Miles&Smiles program has devalued its domestic award redemption rates for travel on partner airlines. The sweet spot of being able to book any one-way domestic award for 10,000 miles in economy or 15,000 miles in business class is gone. Costs have gone up by 50%, and on top of that, Hawaii now has its own award zone, and is even more expensive.
What do you make of this latest Miles&Smiles devaluation?
Not sure if it really matters. It was virtually impossible to book domestic United tickets using Turkish miles. You might get lucky if after 20 calls you get someone to book it for you, and then it turns out it doesn't get ticketed it to United. I had nightmare experiences with them to the point where I just let my miles expire.
(this post is not political, but just thought it was funny).
Turkish lists Taipei as China but when booking award trips from Taipei, China to Shanghai, China, it's Asia to Asia pricing, and not the domestic within one country pricing... What's up with that.
I don't get the fuss about TK being bad for redemptions. Sure, the redemptions aren't as cheap as they used to be but they have fantastic availability for promo awards and virtually unlimited availability for upgrades. I just booked VIE-DXB in J for 53k today, whereas the return with Flying Blue cost me 85k.
Looking at the numbers of points scheme members who are reducing the points value, etc, one has to ask the obvious question …. is this the beginning of the end to the practice?
Well, you know Turkey... they're used to inflation... and denying the genocides they committed against Greeks and Armenians... free İmamoğlu.
Oh, and don't fall for authoritarian Erdogan's rhetorical nationalist push to 'rename' his country's spelling/pronunciation in English. It's still 'Turkey' and always will be.
The domestic chart mostly became useless around 6 months ago when UA stopped releasing saver business awards to partners anyway.
I'm not sure if TK followed through on the 1 million miles challenge reward to all who completed the challenge. But if they did, then I think the number of TK Miles & Smiles millionaires may have also encouraged TK to implement this change.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was just one big bait-and-switch by them... would be on-brand.