Turkish Miles & Smiles is a transfer partner of both Capital One (points transfer instantly) and Citi TY points. The program offers several Sweetspots for travel within the U.S. and into central Asia. Since it is difficult to find United Business Class award availability to travel within the U.S., I typically use the program to book overseas award flights to travel to central Asia (e.g., India, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal).
Using Miles & Smiles to Book Turkish Airlines.
Miles & Smiles charges surprisingly more taxes to travel in their own metal (see the example below). The booking page gives no restrictions when booking the award for either yourself or for your family members/friends (Turkish smartphone App is also reliable for this type of booking).
2 Passenger booking example on Turkish flight:
Single Passenger Booking Example on Turkish Flight:
Turkish Airport check-in counter agent may ask for the credit card that was used for the booking
One should always remember to carry the credit card (that was used to complete the reservation) when checking in at the Turkish airport counter. This rule also applies to any award bookings you make for your family members or friends. I recommend using the credit card of the person you are booking the ticket for (if possible) or send them an image of the credit card used for booking, so they can show it to the agent.
Two award tickets booking error
You may get an error message online when trying to book 2 award tickets (Star Alliance partner flights or Turkish metal) that reads “The first award ticket can only be issued under your name. If you want to have it issued for a loved one, please contact the nearest sales office”.
- This error may not appear for every single user who is trying to book more than one award seat booking. Several people have completed multiple passenger booking transactions successfully without ever getting such an error.
- This error is auto-generated by the Miles & Smiles website when they suspect fraudulent transaction.
- This error may occur irrespective of adding your friend or family member as your companion and creating their own Turkish Miles & Smiles membership.
- This can happen to users even after successfully booking several award flights using Turkish miles in the past.
- I recommend trying the Turkish Miles & Smiles smartphone app to try and complete the booking before attempting to call their dreadful customer service.
Using Miles & Smiles to Book a Partner Star Alliance Award
Miles & Smiles program passes very low fuel surcharges on Air Canada, United, Avianca, SAS, LOT Polish and Air India. Swiss Air bookings with Miles & Smiles pass on very high fuel surcharges (>1000 USD).
Trip Example from JFK to India
Turkish Miles & Smiles charges just 52,500 miles to travel in business class from the U.S. to India and very low taxes for Air India flights.
Using Miles & Smiles to Book a Star Alliance Award Ticket for Yourself
The process is fairly easy to book a Star Alliance ticket for yourself. The system will let you choose your name from the list of saved names and you can continue with the payment after text verification.
Using Miles & Smiles to Book a Star Alliance Award Ticket for Someone Else
If you are booking a Star Alliance award ticket for a family member or a friend, you will encounter a hard stop on the webpage.
Since the message says “for non-members”, I figured I could create a free Miles & Smiles account for the person I am booking the ticket for, but the error message remained the same (even after logging out and in).
Possible workarounds for this issue
One option is to call the non-existent Turkish Miles & Smiles customer service over the phone at 1-800-874-8875 or try your luck reaching them via email from your local airport sales office (https://www.turkishairlines.com/en-us/any-questions/get-in-touch/).
The Miles & Smiles customer service phone number is a joke and it simply says “they are very busy” and hangs up. Even if they respond to your email, you should be prepared to provide picture documentation of your Miles & Smiles digital card, credit card and fill out several authorization forms.
Another option is to transfer your Capital One miles to a family member or friend (assuming they have a compatible Capital One travel card) and complete a separate booking in their name. The miles I transferred from my Venture X card are already stuck in my Miles & Smiles account and I did not want to make another transfer to this unreliable program.
Summary
I wanted to share my experience with using Turkish Miles & Smiles for booking Star Alliance flights for friends & family members. It is a great program to book tickets for yourself, but if you are booking the Turkish Air for another person, be prepared to give your credit card information to that person. Booking a partner Star Alliance flight for another person is not possible on their website at this time.