Ever since I first read about the ability to use just 7,500 Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles for domestic United tickets (including Alaska and Hawaii!), I’ve been a major fan of the currency. I wasn’t sold on Citi ThankYou Points, as the currency seemed weaker than both Chase Ultimate Rewards and Amex Membership Rewards. However, the value of Miles & Smiles changed the calculus completely for me. I’ve since booked five tickets using Turkish miles, for a value of over $3,000!
But it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Turkish has been all over the map in regard to being able to successfully book United tickets.
Running Into the Same Wall Again and Again
I’ve been eager to book a father-daughter trip this summer. With a few ides on the table, the two things I need to line up are award flights and an “open” destination. I’ve been eyeing Florida or a beach destination in Mexico in particular.
United has had some decent X-class Saver award availability, which means Miles & Smiles should be able to see and book this space. I’ve sent off a couple requests to my Turkish reservations office of choice that tends to respond within one business day.
And they’ve shot me down every time. It’s getting frustrating.
The first trip I tried was a three segment itinerary to Omaha, just to see if it would work with two connections and two regional partners. This was shot down. The office stated that they could not see the DEN-OMA inventory, which was still clearly available to me on United’s website.
The second attempt was a ticket to Daytona Beach, again with two connections. Just like the first, the reservations office said they couldn’t find the space to DAB. A day later, it was the same story to San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Well, it isn’t ideal, but I decided to try an itinerary with just one connection to Orlando. No dice. I’m quickly developing a love-hate relationship with my favorite award currency.
What to Do Now??
At this point I’m wondering if I’m starting to get on the nerves of the reservations agents. I mean, who sends them four requests within a 10-day span??? But I am a major award travel nerd, and I really want to nail something down for this summer.
I’ve not tried calling Turkish Airlines in over 4 months, and that is the next step. Email has generally been easy enough, as I just copy and paste everything into a template, change the dates and segments and off it goes. Takes 2 minutes after a United search. Easy peasy. But if the reservations office obviously cannot see all award inventory, this could continue to be an exercise in futility.
I’m curious to see if the call center has any better luck. For a while, they were really good at finding space, and it nearly always matched United’s Saver space. However, I have heard multiple anecdotal reports of not being able to book all segments with Turkish miles. I’m also wondering if there is some issue with a 2-stop ticket, as I have yet to successfully book one of these. The inability to book the 1-stop ticket tells me it’s probably a more systemic issue.
Anyone else been having difficulty with Turkish Miles & Smiles tickets lately? Or is it just me?
I just went through the torture of booking a UA award with TK miles. Took me about two weeks, in which:
-I checked UA and LifeMiles availability daily and called the TK call center to try to book it. They can’t see any available award space (and these are for simple non-stops rt)
-I tried emailing NY, Singapore and ATL ticketing. NY responded about a week later telling me they were closed, no response at all from the others.
-Miraculously, the inventory started showing up on the TK website about a week into this, so alas! it must now be bookable by the call center. Nope. I even mentioned that the award space was showing up and bookable on their own website, but they were steadfast that they could not book it. (I needed to transfer miles from Citi, so did not want to risk transferring the miles and the inventory going away in order to book on the website).
-I think maybe 5 calls later (once a day or so), I found the unicorn agent who could see the UA inventory and hold the award.
-Transferred the miles, called two days later to book. They transfer you to an automated line to enter your credit card info – every time I entered it, the system said it was an invalid number. Tried a different card, still didn’t work. On maybe the 10th try (the agent comes back every 3 times or so), it went through.
-2 weeks, dozens of calls, hours on the phone and a ton of frustration with agents (make sure you know and phonetically spell out every airport code – Newark? do you want to go to JFK? I don’t know that airport, can you give me the code?)… I have my EWR-TLV biz class tix for only 45k ea way.
Worth it? Probably not – at some point, it would have been a wiser decision to just transfer AX points to ANA and be done with it at only slightly higher mileage levels. But I had a ton of Citi points and just kind of wondered if I could ever make it happen. God forbid I end up having to change the flights or cancel the trip.
tl;dr – My suggestion for anyone but the most hearty mileage hunters – stay away from TK. You will pay for that discount.
That sounds so awful, Darin! What a pain. I’ve had my share of frustration, but not once you actually get into a ticket being reserved. Once I get to that stage, it’s been pretty painless, except for the one cancellation that is a *very* manual process (think filling out a paper form).
How do you book via email? Once they confirm the award availability do they call u for the credit card info? And what’s the email to do this? Thanks!
You have to email a call center. I’ll send you my preferred one by email. They will make a reservation with a record locator, and you will then need to call in to finish ticketing.
That would be awesome! Thanks.
I could sure use the same thing as Amy and email for them. I did send them an email and nothing came back so I assumed it went to the abyss.
Thanks for your blog.
Could you also send me the preferred email?
Could you also send me the preferred email? Thanks so much.
I booked two, 2-stop itineraries in March (PHL-CLE-DEN-ASE and ASE-DEN-IAH-PHL) over the phone. As long as you tell them it’s a multi-city itinerary and feed them the individual segments, I’ve had no issues.
Thanks for the comment! I’ll give them a call today. Glad to know you can book tickets with more than one stop!
Haven’t had luck recently with call centres. No one answering. Can u tell me what number u use? Thanks!
Hi Amy,
Try: 1-800-874-8875
For me, the real problem is that United offers ZERO saver first class space, and I don”t do coach.
All I can think of is this, Gene! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2JKXbVGq7A
That must get interesting where the only airline that flies a route is all economy.