Making head waves across points and miles sites around the world is an upcoming massive devaluation to the Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles program. First noticed by Prince of Travel, the airline published new award charts that show most, if not all award options being increased.
At first, there was no mention of when the pricing would take effect as the actual booking engine still priced awards at their old mileage amounts but Turkish has since updated their site and have now sent out an email to members stating the old charts are in effect until February 15. This means the new award pricing will take effect on February 16th along with a new pricing structure that sees award flights with connections being priced by segment! So if you a Miles&Smiles balance that you have been planning to use to book an award flight it would be best if you do so over the next week!
Outside of Canadians who are Turkish Airlines frequent flyer, the Miles&Smiles program is primarily a niche program utilized by points & miles enthusiasts who for the most part are using U.S. credit cards as some of them have decent transfer options to the Miles&SMiles program. For most Canadians not playing the U.S. card game, the only half decent method was converting points from Marriott Bonvoy to Miles&Smiles but most seem to find more value using Marriott points for Marriott stays so it is a not so often used conversion.
New award flight mileage Requirements
The new award flight charts have basically decimated the program’s best redemption options. One such popular redemption was business class from North America to Europe, which under the old award charts priced out as little as 45,000 miles one way. With the upcoming award charts that same redemption will start at 85,000 miles one way! That’s a mind boggling 89% increase!
Economy class award flights from Canada to Turkey jump by 33% from 30,000 to 40,000 and business class jumps 44% from 45,000 to 65,000 miles.
Another popular redemption was for those who are stateside where you could redeem Miles&Smiles miles from the lower 48 states to Hawaii for only 7,500 miles one way and that is being bumped up by 33% to 10,000 miles.
New segment based priced
Another big hit to the program is new segment based pricing instead of pricing by region. Up until this change awards were priced by region, that is if you redeemed for flights between Canada and Europe with a connection in Istanbul the mileage required was based on Canada to Europe. Now with the new award charts and segment based pricing, the awards will be priced as Canada to Istanbul and then Istanbul to Europe.
If we use Turkish’s example from above, the award in the old charts would be priced as Middle East to Europe(2) which required as little as 11,900 miles one way from Dubai to London with the connection in Istanbul. Now it is priced per segment and the same award will require 33,000 miles!
Wrapping it up
Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles has just shaken up the points and miles world with a major devaluation to their program. Not only is the airline is increasing the mileage requirements for awards by substantial amounts they are also moving to segment based pricing which further escalates the pricing of future award flights. Fro most Canadians, the program is an unknown and this news is moot, but for some Canadian points and miles enthusiasts, in particular those with U.S. credit cards, it will present the requirement to shift some potential future award flight strategies to other programs that will provide better value.
Click here to learn more about the upcoming Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles changes
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