Turkish Airlines offers one of my favorite business class products, and that’s in spite of the fact that as of now their business class seats are quite outdated.
Fortunately that’s changing shortly, as Turkish Airlines has just taken delivery of their first Boeing 787-9, which features an all new business class product. Their new business class product will be available on their 787-9s and 30 A350-900s, which they’ll take delivery of through 2023.
With Turkish Airlines shortly launching flights with the 787-9, I wanted to talk briefly about how to redeem miles for this awesome product.
While Turkish Airlines is flying the 787-9 to a variety of destinations (some only for a very limited time), let me look at the three North American routes that are consistently getting the 787-9 in the coming months.
Turkish Airlines will fly the 787 to:
- Washington Dulles as of August 8, 2019
- Mexico City & Cancun as of August 25, 2019
- Atlanta as of September 10, 2019
I’ve been trying to book a business class award on their Washington Dulles flight, though there has been virtually no award availability. So which route should you book if you want to try Turkish’s new 787 business class?
Turkish’s new flight to Mexico City and Cancun has a ton of business class award space. This operates as a triangle flight, from Istanbul to Mexico City to Cancun to Istanbul.
A vast majority of dates have at least four business class award seats, which is pretty incredible.
For example, here’s a calendar from Istanbul to Mexico City showing nonstop dates with business class award availability:
Availability is similarly good in the other direction:
Unfortunately award availability on the Washington Dulles flight is virtually non-existent, though the Atlanta to Istanbul flight does have a good amount of award availability, both this fall and winter.
So if you are looking to travel across the Atlantic this fall or winter (especially to some tougher to get to places, given that Turkish flies to more countries than any other airline in the world) it could be worth routing through Atlanta or Mexico to try Turkish’s excellent new business class.
If you’re looking to redeem miles to Istanbul, you can expect to pay the following in business class one-way:
- Air Canada Aeroplan — 57,500 miles (from the US), 80,000 miles (from Mexico)
- Avianca LifeMiles — 63,000 miles (from the US), 67,500 miles (from Mexico)
- United MileagePlus — 70,000 miles (from the US), 75,000 miles (from Mexico)
In many cases you can book an award from North America to another region via Istanbul, though the mileage requirement may differ.
Anyone have plans to try Turkish’s new 787-9 business class?
(Tip of the hat to Running With Miles)
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