Miles&Smiles, the frequent flyer program of Turkish Airlines, was known for years among award travel enthusiasts as a goldmine of high-value redemption opportunities. The program uses a series of region-based award charts to price its own award flights as well as partner-operated award flights. And, if you’re willing to do a bit of searching, you can find some award flights that offer several cents per mile in value.

Unfortunately, in 2024, the Miles&Smiles program underwent a major devaluation as award rates for almost all flights on Turkish Airlines and its partner airlines increased. So, while the Miles&Smiles program still uses region-based award charts, many of the sweet spots that previously excited travel enthusiasts have disappeared.

Nonetheless, there’s still a lot to love about Miles&Smiles. The program is a 1:1 transfer partner of Bilt Rewards, Capital One Rewards and Citi ThankYou Rewards. Turkish Airlines is a member of Star Alliance, which means you can earn and redeem Miles&Smiles miles through any Star Alliance airline. And you can still get great value when redeeming miles for award flights through this program.

The process of booking award flights can sometimes be confusing, especially if you’re new to the world of award travel. So, in this article, we’re going to explain exactly how to book an award flight through the Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles program.

Joining Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles

Before you start purchasing award flights through Miles&Smiles, you’ll first need to be an active member of the program. To enroll in Miles&Smiles, visit the Turkish Airlines website and click the “Sign up” button in the top-right corner of the homepage.

Turkish Airlines website

Once you’ve done that, you’ll be directed to a new page where you’ll be required to provide some personal information, including your name, date of birth, nationality, preferred language, home address, email address and phone number.

Turkish Airlines website - Membership Enrollment Details

Then, you’ll be asked to create a password for your Miles&Smiles account. Once you’ve done all that, accept the terms and conditions and click the red “Create your Miles&Smiles account” button at the bottom of the page.

At this point, you’ll be assigned a unique membership number. We recommend writing this number down somewhere you’ll remember it because you’ll need it to sign in to your account and to earn miles. You should also receive a welcome email containing your Miles&Smiles account number.

How to Earn Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles Miles

As a member of the Miles&Smiles program, you’re eligible to both earn and redeem miles. Before you can start booking award flights through this program, you’ll need to be familiar with how to earn enough points to afford an award flight. The cheapest available award flight through the Miles&Smiles program costs 4,500 miles (which can buy you a one-way economy class flight within Turkey). So, before you book an award flight, you’ll need to earn at least that many miles.

There are several ways to earn miles through this program, but some are better than others. In the following sections, we’re going to highlight a few of the most effective ways to earn Turkish miles.

Transfer Credit Card Points

For most U.S. consumers, the best way to earn Turkish miles is to transfer points from eligible credit card rewards programs. Turkish Miles&Smiles is a 1:1 transfer partner of Bilt Rewards, Capital One Rewards and Citi ThankYou Rewards. So, if you have a credit card that’s part of any one of these three programs, you can transfer points and have miles in your Miles&Smiles account within minutes.

For example, if you had 75,000 Capital One Miles, you could transfer those to the Miles&Smiles program for free and have 75,000 Turkish miles in your account balance almost instantly.

If you have a credit card from one of the aforementioned issuers, that’s probably your most effective way to earn Turkish miles. And, if you want to earn Turkish miles for a specific redemption, signing up for a credit card from one of these issuers might be a good idea.

Flying with Turkish Airlines and Partner Airlines

Another effective way to earn Turkish miles, particularly if you fly a lot, is to take paid flights with Turkish Airlines or one of its partner airlines. To do so, you’ll need to select Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles as your frequent flyer program and enter your account number, either when booking your flight or when checking in for your flight.

When flying on Turkish Airlines or AnadoluJet (a subsidiary of Turkish Airlines), you’ll earn miles based on the distance of your flight, your fare class and your membership tier in the Miles&Smiles program. The only exception to this is for flights within Turkey, which earn a fixed amount of miles based on the cabin class (regardless of the flight distance and your membership tier).

To see how many miles you’d earn on a Turkish Airlines-operated flight, visit the Turkish Airlines earnings table page on the Turkish Airlines website. Then, using the earnings table you can find the cell that corresponds with your flight type (international or domestic), status tier and booking class and multiply the percentage in that cell by the actual distance (in miles) of your flight.

In addition to earning miles on Turkish Airlines flights, you can also earn miles on paid flights operated by any Star Alliance airline. Here’s the current list of Star Alliance member airlines:

In addition to the Star Alliance airlines listed above, you can earn Turkish miles by taking paid flights with some non-Star Alliance partner airlines, including the following:

  • Azul
  • GOL
  • IndiGo
  • Olympic Air

To find out how many miles you could earn by flying with one of these partner airlines, visit the “Earn miles as you fly!” page of the Turkish Airlines website and click on the logo of the airline that you plan to fly with. Then, you’ll be able to see that airline’s earnings table, which works pretty much the same way as the earnings table for Turkish Airlines. You can simply multiply your flight distance (in miles) by the percentage associated with your booking class.

Other Ways to Earn

In addition to the two earning methods described above, there are many other ways to earn miles through the Miles&Smiles program, including booking hotel stays, transferring points from hotel loyalty programs, renting cars, paying for airport Wi-Fi, buying furniture and more. However, these other earning methods aren’t very effective on their own.

Nonetheless, if you use Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles as your primary frequent flyer program, you should look into these other earning methods, as they may be able to earn you some extra miles once in a while.

Booked Turkish Airlines award flight.

How to Book Award Flights Through Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles

Now that you know how to become a member of the Miles&Smiles program and how to earn enough miles to purchase an award flight, let’s look at the actual step-by-step process of booking an award flight through this program.

The first thing you’ll need to do is navigate to the Turkish Airlines website and sign in to your Miles&Smiles account by clicking the “Sign in” button in the top-right corner of the homepage and entering your account credentials.

From there, you can return to the homepage of the website and look for the flight booking tool. In the top-right corner of the flight booking tool box, you’ll see a black hyperlink that says “Award ticket – Buy a ticket with Miles.” When you click on this link, you’ll be redirected to a page with a new flight booking tool that looks very similar to the one on the previous page.

There are two tabs on this flight booking tool: one for Turkish Airlines-operated flights and another for award flights operated by other Star Alliance airlines. It’s worth noting that, although Turkish Airlines does have partnerships with several non-Star Alliance airlines, you can’t redeem Turkish miles for flights on any of these non-Star Alliance airlines.

To book your Turkish Airlines award flight, click the “Award Ticket” tab. If you want to book an award flight on a Star Alliance partner airline, click the “Star Award Ticket” tab. After that, the award booking process is fairly similar regardless of which of these two types of awards you’re searching for.

Enter your departure airport, arrival airport, type of flight (one-way or round-trip), travel dates, number of passengers and desired cabin class. Once all of that information is correct, click the red “Search flights” button on the right side.

From there, you’ll see all of the flight results that match your search query (either operated by Turkish Airlines exclusively or by all Star Alliance airlines, depending on which type of award you chose).

You can sort the results by recommended, price, flight duration, arrival time, departure time or number of stops.

Once you find a flight that you want to add to your itinerary, click on the bubble next to the cabin class you want to book for that flight. You’ll then see information about the fare you’ve selected, including baggage allowance, a breakdown of fees, seat selection availability and more. If all of that looks good, click the red button that states the required miles for the flight.

Repeat this process to add your return flight to your itinerary (if you’re trying to book a round-trip award flight). After you’ve selected all of your flights, you’ll be able to see a summary of your selected flights, the total required miles and the total taxes and fees (in Turkish liras) in the blue “Details” bar at the bottom of the screen. Click the “Continue” button on this bar to proceed to the next page.

You’ll then need to provide personal information for any passengers on your itinerary, including name, date of birth, gender, email address and phone number. After that, if your fare class includes seat selection, you’ll have the opportunity to select your seat on the next page. You’ll also be able to add travel extras, like extra baggage, sports equipment and pets.

Finally, you’ll need to add a payment method to cover any applicable taxes and fees for your itinerary. Please note that taxes and fees are expressed in Turkish lira and not in U.S. dollars, so you may have to do a conversion to find out how much you’re paying in U.S. currency.

Once you’ve added a payment method, you can confirm your flight booking. At this point, you’ll receive a confirmation number, which you’ll need to check in to your flight. You should also receive a confirmation email containing this number to the address you provided.

As soon as your award flight booking is confirmed, the required miles will be immediately deducted from your Miles&Smiles account balance. If you decide you don’t want to take your award flight, you can receive a full refund of your miles as well as any taxes and fees you paid. However, you’ll have to pay a cancellation fee of 150 Turkish liras (about $4) for domestic flights and $70 for international flights. In the case of a no-show (when you don’t cancel your flight in advance), you can still receive a refund. But, you’ll have to pay a cancellation fee of 200 Turkish liras (about $6) for domestic flights and $150 for international flights.

The Bottom Line

The Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles program has been a favorite among award travel enthusiasts for years for a number of reasons. For one, Turkish Airlines is a member of Star Alliance (an alliance of 25 airlines), which means you can earn and redeem Turkish miles with any of these airlines. The Miles&Smiles program is also a 1:1 transfer partner of Bilt Rewards, Capital One Rewards and Citi ThankYou Rewards, which makes it easy to rack up Turkish miles if you have a credit card that’s part of one of these programs.

And, because Miles&Smiles uses region-based award charts to price all award flights (both Turkish Airlines-operated and partner-operated), it’s possible to find excellent value for your miles through this program.

Plus, making award flight bookings through the Miles&Smiles program is a fairly easy process. Essentially, whether you’re searching for an award flight on Turkish Airlines or one of its Star Alliance partners, the process is almost identical to booking a flight with cash. Nonetheless, if you ever need assistance booking an award flight through Miles&Smiles, you can always refer to the instructions in this article.