I’ve long been a fan of the Turkish Miles & Smiles loyalty program. It’s quirky, and often difficult. But it has provided me with massive value over the past few years. I’ve used Miles & Smiles to book everything from business class home from Europe to multiple domestic United flights to Hawaii. Which makes this massive 2024 Turkish devaluation so painful.
Turkish Devaluation 2024
I’m not going to go over all the routes that have increased in price, as it has been written about elsewhere. Most of the sweet spots are pretty much gone. There are now better miles for almost all of the awards that used to be highly prized.
Given that Turkish Miles & Smiles doesn’t have much going for it other than the award prices, they’ve lost much of the appeal they had. At least for me. There is an award cancellation fee, so that’s not something you can avoid by using Turkish. Miles & Smiles also passes along carrier surcharges, which makes some other programs better for booking carriers such as Lufthansa Group — which are known for their egregious fees.
The biggest pain of this 2024 Turkish devaluation is the lack of notice members were given. If you were sitting on Turkish miles, you had a matter of days to use them between when the announcement was made and the changes took effect. I have a small stash, and I considered trying to use them for one last premium cabin award. But ended up running out of time on February 14.
Remaining Good Uses of Turkish Miles
There are precious few uses of Turkish Miles & Smiles left. I can’t find anything in the international awards that really appeals. But Turkish remains a solid use for domestic United flights. The price for United awards — including awards to Alaska and Hawaii — is now:
- 10,000 Miles & Smiles one-way in economy
- 15,000 Miles & Smiles one-way in business
There are still some better options for domestic flights, however, including both Aeroplan and LifeMiles. It really depends on the origin and destination which miles are best. United MileagePlus isn’t a bad option, either, and the best one when you need to be able to cancel for free.
Final Thoughts
One thing is for sure: I won’t be investing in Miles & Smiles like I used to. The 2024 Turkish devaluation is sad news in the award travel world. It would have been nice to have 3-6 months to be able to burn through remaining miles and make a few great bookings. It would have also been nice for Turkish to devalue incrementally. Rather than 80% jumps in award cost on some routes, keeping things to between 10-20% seems much more reasonable.
Turkish will remain a choice for domestic travel on United. And business class within the U.S. remains an excellent use. But other than that, there isn’t much appeal anymore. I’ll be focusing my miles earning elsewhere, most likely looking to Aeroplan and LifeMiles as my primary award programs, supplemented by ANA where it makes sense.
What are your thoughts on the 2024 Turkish devaluation?
Everything about Turkish is going downhill. Economy class passengers can’t select their seat for free even during online check in, they only allow it for free within 6 hours of departure. These also apply to full service fares between US and S Asia. Tickets are non cancellable even for semi flex fares. They are trying to tighten any loose ends in any way possible. I wouldn’t be surprised if they soon reduce baggage allowance as well.
It’s a huge bummer. I’ve been a fan of the program for a few years now. Ironically, I’ve only flown the airline once.
“The biggest pain of this 2024 Turkish devaluation is the lack of notice members were given. If you were sitting on Turkish miles, you had a matter of days to use them between when the announcement was made and the changes took effect.” Not even days, in my experience. After the announcement, I found a Star Alliance award seat available via Turkish. It was a good deal – 45k miles for flying business class from America to Western Europe, on TAP Portugal. So off I went and transferred points. Everything went great until the last step, when I had to… Read more »
Yikes. I didn’t know it was that bad. I decided it wasn’t worth pursuing when I had mere hours left to try to get something booked. Going to save my points for domestic only going forward.