The Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles program has eliminated what I’d consider to be one of the last sweet spots of the program…
Continue reading: Turkish Miles&Smiles Devalues Sweet Spot Domestic Partner Awards
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
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.
The domestic chart mostly became useless around 6 months ago when UA stopped releasing saver business awards to partners anyway.
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.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was just one big bait-and-switch by them... would be on-brand.
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?
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.
(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.
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.
I was recently submitting a retroclaim for an A3 flight and TK's form lists LCA as being in Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus 😀 Mind you, not even TRNC itself claims Larnaca as its territory, it's probably caused by country code CY simply having that label in TK's system.
There are multiple instances where domestic flights get international pricing in various programs. For example, most SkyTeam programs will apply international pricing to longhaul domestic flights in France (Air France itself also generally treats them that way, e.g. in terms of XP they earn). I suppose same approach would make sense in the US where flights between various regions/states of the US could be treated the same way.
Of course they did follow through on it, Flyertalk is full of people who got the million miles. I doubt this motivates this change though, how many of the new millionaires would spend their miles on US flights?
"since Turkish makes the same saver award space available to members of its own program as it does to members of partner programs."
Unfortunately this is not true anymore- have seen numerous discrepancies here
The change was due to the millions of miles they just handed out for free....after pulling the promotion and changing the t&c. You had to have known this was coming. At this point, burn all miles earned with Turkish and flee to LifeMiles or Aeroplan
Well, they should be more accurate, Taipei, Republic of China, to Shanghai, People’s Republic of China, two separate, independent, sovereign countries, one of which is ‘free,’ and the other occupied by communists.
Michael, I like your style. Besides, it’s got great views of LGA.
And, if Eric’s ‘nice,’ Luigi can send him some items from the commissary with all the donations he’s receiving (1 year today, Dec 4, 2024, though, I hear it wasn’t him… he’s got an alibi… or whatever, just sayin’…)
Agreed, it seems United has a lot more availability on Turkish than other star alliance partners though.
How very Turkish of them no advance warning.
But it's still like your service your food but I quit using Turkish airlines frequent player program.
Second that, and their partner redemption on the TK website is always malfunctioning!
Basically if you’re not redeeming on TK flights, just forget it.
Taiwan isn't actually as free as your brainwashed propaganda.
KMT oppressed the natives.
The current ROC occupied are free. Indigenous are not.
TK has modified this program and it's website at least 4 times after it launched.
4 TIMES!!!!!!
Hardly any confidence left for TK being trustworthy or intention to run this promo in good faith.
They f***ed members even before they gave away the million.
TK has the most untrustworthy FFP.
Yeah, they are known for the ice-cream-cone bait-and-switch thing after all… fun the first time, the tenth time? Not-so-much.
That’s far more nuanced than most know or need to know… like, martial law ended in the late 80s, so, like, such gripes about KMT today really isn’t as relevant; and, if that’s an attempted basis to sow internal divisions, I think the external threats are far greater than any of those worries.
Well, the KMT is increasingly pro-mainland China, so I wouldn't exactly trust my life with that party.
They gave 1 million Miles to more than a thousand people, what more could you ask for from a loyalty scheme
That's because they successfully assimilated them.
By no means this is trying to divide anyone. This is just trying to pierce through all the propaganda that being in Taiwan is "free".
But sure, being a weaponized puppet buffer state carries a far greater threat than oppressed natives.
They had a challenge, a task, they didn't give it away for nothing.
Then they realized participants are hundred times bigger. So they each time add more deterrence.
Ending up with a thousand people is probably too much, hence the devaluation.
How lower could you hate from a loyalty scheme.
Relative to PRC, you bet Taiwan is free, and relative to a potential violent re-unification, yeah, Taiwan should remain free. We can argue semantics, but, I'm glad we agree that their sovereignty is more important, very much 'real,' and a valid concern for all with a conscience.