Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles is now offering 30% off Turkish Airlines awards booked by 31 December 2021, with travel up till 15 May 2022.
This is a fantastic opportunity to take advantage of Miles&Smiles sweet spots, and with Turkey’s upcoming addition to the VTL on 16 December 2021, travellers can enjoy quarantine-free travel to Singapore even when transiting through Istanbul.
Save 30% off Turkish Airlines awards
Here’s the key details of the Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles award sale:
- Booking period: 7-31 December 2021
- Travel period: 7 December 2021 to 15 May 2022 (blackout: 7-25 April 2022 for international flights)
- Applicable carriers: Turkish Airlines only
- Award types: One-way or Round-trip
- Applicable cabins: Business or Economy Class
Award tickets booked under this promotion are refundable with the usual US$25 refund fee. Changes can also be made free of charge until 31 May 2022, as per Turkish’s prevailing COVID-19 flexibility policy.
| ⚠️ Try and make changes by 31 December 2021! |
| Any changes made after 31 December 2021 will be repriced according to regular rates. For example, if I make a change on 28 December 2021 I can keep the 30% discount, but if I make a change on 2 January 2022, I’ll need to top-up the balance 30%. |
The discount will be automatically reflected when you search for awards on the Turkish Airlines website. For example, a one-way ticket from Singapore to Frankfurt in Business Class normally costs 45,000 miles; but with the 30% off it becomes 31,500 miles.
The full T&C of this offer can be found below:
|
Miles&Smiles sweet spots
Turkish Airlines uses a zone-based award chart, which is identical for Star Alliance and Turkish Airlines award redemptions. Since travel must be on Turkish Airlines, I’m only going to show the zone pairings that make sense (e.g no Oceania).
| Round-trip from Singapore | Economy | Business |
| Europe (including Turkey) | 42,000 |
63,000 |
| Middle East | 44,800 |
65,800 |
| North Africa | 63,000 |
84,000 |
| North America | 63,000 |
94,500 |
| South America | 73,500 |
105,000 |
| For one-way awards, multiply amounts above by 50% | ||
Business Class tickets from Singapore to Europe, North America and South America were already excellent sweet spots, and the 30% discount makes it even more sensational.
If you can’t find the rates above when searching, it simply means that promotional awards aren’t available for the date in question. You’ll need to try other dates instead.
For context, KrisFlyer would charge you 184,000/ up to 198,000 miles for a round-trip Business Class ticket to Europe and the USA respectively. You could fly with Turkish Airlines to Europe and back three times for the cost of a single Singapore Airlines round-trip!
What about fuel surcharges?
There’s one caveat though- KrisFlyer does not impose fuel surcharges on Singapore Airlines flights, while Miles&Smiles will add them to Turkish Airlines flights.
However, the good news is that Turkish doesn’t pass on the full fuel surcharges on award tickets. It’s still a significant co-pay for trips to North and South America, but well, it’s not as bad as it could be…
| Total Taxes & Surcharges |
||
| Round-trip from Singapore | Economy | Business |
| Frankfurt (Europe) |
S$412 | S$750 |
| Dubai (Middle East) |
S$317 | S$872 |
| Casablanca (North Africa) |
S$430 | S$757 |
| New York JFK (North America) |
S$586 | S$1,050 |
| Sao Paulo (South America) |
S$538 | S$1,078 |
On the whole I’d say the miles you save more than justify the additional cash, but it’s still worth taking note of for anyone who’s miles rich and cash poor.
VTL flights to Singapore
Turkey will be joining the VTL scheme from 16 December 2021, which means that transit through Istanbul will no longer affect your eligibility for a quarantine waiver upon return to Singapore, provided your IST-SIN flight is a VTL service.
Turkish Airlines currently operates 6x weekly flights to Singapore on TK55/54, but it’s yet to be confirmed which days will be designated VTL services.
| Flights | Days | ||||||||
| TK55 |
S | M | T | W | T | F | S | ||
| SIN 2335 |
➞ | IST 0610 |
✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |
| TK54 |
S | M | T | W | T | F | S | ||
| IST 0145 |
➞ | SIN 1710 |
✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |
Since you can change your booking for free anyway, it shouldn’t hurt to make some speculative bookings now- I’m guessing VTL services will be at least 3x weekly.
Turkey is currently a Category II country, which means that passengers on non-VTL flights from Istanbul will have to do a 7-day SHN at their place of residence (assuming Turkey is the highest category country in their 14-day history).
Which cards support transfers to Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles?
If you’re looking to earn Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles miles, the only bank in Singapore which offers transfers is Citibank.
 |
||
| Bank | Citi Miles | ThankYou Points |
 |
1:1 | 5:2 |
| Ratio refers to bank points: miles. For a full list of transfer partners by bank, refer to this post | ||
Points can be transferred to Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles at the same ratio as any of its other frequent flyer partners, with a transfer fee of S$26.75 applicable.
Conclusion
Turkish Airlines is offering 30% off Business and Economy Class awards booked by 31 December 2021 and flown by 15 May 2022, and it’s a great opportunity to offload some Citibank points (if you don’t mind paying higher than average fuel surcharges).
Award space could dry up fairly quickly, so I’d recommend making bookings sooner rather than later.
(HT: OMAAT)
Would it possible to fly back from Europe (a VTL country of course) and transit thru Turkey and back to Sg via TK 54 (VTL?) Wonder how they would check the vaccination and PDT done at the European side
Short travel period and long blackout period just make no sense
TK have published their VTL flights. Not a lot of these.
https://www.turkishairlines.com/en-int/announcements/coronavirus-outbreak/coronavirus-announcements/index.html
thanks!
Just back on the inaugural TK VTL and almost didn’t make it – check-in staff at IST (very aggressively) insisted on a PCR instead of an ART and refused to even see the SafeTravel requirements.
Luckily a supervisor checked it up and explained that “the regulation is new” – hopefully this isn’t a scenario that repeats itself on future flights. Very unpleasant experience all around.