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Miles&Smiles, the loyalty program for Turkish Airlines, offers Canadians opportunities to earn Miles and then redeem them for award flights, upgrades, travel extras, gift cards, and more.
As a member of Star Alliance, Turkish Airlines and the Miles&Smiles program gives members the ability to redeem for flights throughout the airline’s own network and the destination networks of over 25 partner airlines. However, actually earning the Miles needed to book these award flights is unfortunately quite difficult for Canadians as there are no Miles&Smiles credit cards and transfer partners are limited.
Given this, in this guide, we’ll share all about earning and redeeming Turkish Miles, moving up the program’s elite status tiers, and award flight sweet spots, helping you decide whether this program is worth more of your attention.
There are a number of ways to earn Miles&Smiles Miles:
Since there are no co-branded Miles&Smiles credit cards in Canada, earning Miles without flying can be difficult. In the US, there is the Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles Visa Signature Card, but if you don’t have access to that, the best way to earn Miles without flying is by transferring points from other rewards programs.
Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles is a transfer partner with a number of financial institutes, hotel brands, shopping portals, and travel companies. However, unfortunately few of these options are particularly relevant for Canadians.
The list of relevant transfer partners in Canada is fairly short, with the most valuable earning opportunities existing with a handful hotel loyalty programs.
In Canada, your best bet is to transfer points from the following programs:
In addition to the above point-transfer options, you can also choose to earn Miles at participating IHG, Marriott, and Wydham properties. The earning rates at these hotel brands is typically 1–2 Miles per $1 USD (or local currency equivalent spent), and can be accessed by choosing Turkish Miles&Smiles as your preferred rewards program for earning in your hotel loyalty account or when you make your reservation.
Unfortunately, the limited number of transfer options does make it quite difficult to earn Miles&Smiles Miles without flying. Comparatively, in the US, Turkish Miles&Smiles is a transfer partner of Bilt Rewards, CapitalOne Miles, and Citi ThankYou Rewards, making it considerably easier to build up your account balance.
For Canadians, aside from transferring points from partnered rewards programs to Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles, the best way to earn Miles is, unsurprisingly, through paid flights with Turkish Airlines, its low-cost affiliate AJet (previously AnadoluJet), and with partnered airlines.
When you fly on a paid ticket with Turkish Airlines and its low-cost affiliate, AJet, you earn Miles based on your elite status, fare class and cabin, route, and the distance flown.
For flights that take place entirely within Türkiye, you earn a fixed number of points based on your cabin class. As seen in the chart below, you can expect to earn 1,000–1,250 Miles when you fly in business class and 150–600 Miles when you fly in economy class.
Then, for flights that involve an international component, you earn Miles in accordance with the same chart, but taking into consideration your elite status, cabin and fare class, and the distance flown.
In Canada, Turkish Airlines flies to Montreal (YUL), Toronto (YYZ), and Vancouver (YVR), and then connects onward to many other global destinations and a wide range of regions and cities worth exploring within Türkiye.
Turkish Airlines is also part of the Star Alliance partnership, so as a member you can opt to earn Miles&Smiles Miles with these partner airlines by inputting your member number when you book. For example, you can book a flight directly with Air Canada and then instead of earning Aeroplan points, you can choose isntead to earn Miles with Turkish Airlines. Just be aware that you can only earn loyalty rewards with one airline at a time, so by choosing to earn with Miles&Smiles, you won’t be able to earn Aeroplan points on the flight.
When earning Miles with Star Alliance partners, each airline provides its own chart and/or earning structure (you can see a portion of Air Canada’s chart in the image below). More details on how to earn Miles with Star Alliance partners, including the number of Miles you’ll earn can be found on the Miles&Smiles website.
Depending on your travel focus and priorities, earning with Miles&Smiles may make sense, but for most Canadians it will likely be more valuable to earn rewards for a more accessible airline loyalty program like Aeroplan. This is because Aeroplan points can be easily earned in Canada with co-branded credit cards, and can also be used across the same Star Alliance network. Earning through Aeroplan also gives you priority booking access when you’re looking to redeem for flights with Air Canada.
You can choose to earn Aeroplan or other Star Alliance airline loyalty rewards when booking with Turkish Airlines, so before adding your Miles&Smiles membership number to your next reservation consider which reward currency will ultimately be the most valuable to you.
Star Alliance partner airlines include: Aegean Airlines, Air Canada, Air China, Air India, Air New Zealand, ANA, Austrian Airlines, Avianca, Brussels Airlines, Copa Airlines, Croatia Airlines, Egypt Air, Ethiopian Airlines, EVA Air, ITA Airways, LOT Polish Airlines, Lufthansa, Shenzhen Airlines, Singapore Airlines, South African Airways, SWISS, TAP Air Portugal, Thai Airways, Turkish Airlines, and United.
You can also earn Miles&Smiles Miles with the following non-alliance earning partners:
The number of miles you earn with each partner airline is based on the route, distance flown, fare type, and cost, with each airline providing its own separate earning structure.
With one additional non-alliance airline partners IndiGo, you don’t earn miles, but you can enjoy additional travel perks and benefits thanks to your Turkish Miles&Smiles membership.
Another way to build up your stash of Miles is by buying them directly from the airline. To purchase miles, you simply need to log in to your Turkish Miles&Smiles account via the mobile app or website and navigate to the “Miles Transaction” section.
Turkish Airlines Miles regularly cost $30 USD (including VAT) for every 1,000 miles, and you’re allowed to buy up to 100,000 miles per calendar year. Just keep in mind that purchased Miles are non-refundable and do not count as Status Miles (so they won’t help you improve your elite status).
It’s also worth noting that Turkish Airlines will occasionally offer a promotional rate for buying miles, with previous sales offering as much as a 100% bonus on your purchase.
Another way for Canadians (or anyone) to earn Miles&Smiles Miles is by including your membership number when you book a car rental with participating companies. To earn Miles this way, you typically just need to include your Miles&Smiles membership number when you make an eligible booking.
The Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles program is partnered with the following car rental companies:
Most of the car rental earning rates are based on how many days you’re renting the car, with rewards starting at around 500–1,000 Miles per booking, though some companies offer more.
You can find the full details on the Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles partner page, under “car rental.” The details of each company’s earning rate are available by clicking on the their logo.
When booking a car rental, it can also be helpful to choose to pay with a credit card like the TD First Class Travel® Visa Infinite* Card or the National Bank World Elite Mastercard that provides car rental collision/damage coverage. Since the insurance coverage offered by car rental companies often costs around $25/day, by choosing the right credit card, you could save hundreds of dollars on your next road trip.
One final way to earn Miles is through booking holidays, cruises, and guided tours.
With your Miles&Smiles membership, you can earn on a handful of travel expenses, such as:
The Miles&Smiles website lists all the available travel partners, so check that out to see where else you can earn.
Once you have some Miles saved up in your account, there are a few different ways to redeem them:
The most valuable way to redeem your Miles&Smiles Miles is for award flights with Turkish Airlines or one of its many airline partners. The price for award flights booked on Turkish Airlines or on its low-cost subsidiary AJet is calculated using a zone-based redemption chart, with one for standard award tickets and another for promotional award tickets.
To redeem your Miles for a Turkish Airlines award flight, go to the Turkish Airlines website and sign-in to your Miles&Smiles account. Next, click on “Buy a ticket with Miles.” This will bring you to the search page, where you can look up your desired award flight. Here are some key redemption rates between Canada and Türkiye:
When booking an award flight, you can also choose to pay with a Cash&Miles combination. This lets you pay up to 50% of the award ticket price (excluding the tax) with cash and the other 50% with Miles. However, it’s only available for tickets booked through Turkish Airlines website or app, and this option is not available for codeshare flights.
That said, it’s worth noting that you can still earn Miles on award flights booked using Cash&Miles. Turkish Airlines states that the earnings are to be “in accordance with the terms and conditions of the tickets they purchase.” They go on to share the example of a “B” class paid ticket between Istanbul and Ankara earning 600 Miles, and the same amount being earned when the payment is made via Cash&Miles. From this, we can conclude that you’ll earn full Miles even when you pay for the maximum amount of the ticket using Cash&Miles.
As we mentioned above, you can also book award flights for Star Alliance airline partners; however, to do this, you need to access a different booking portal. Award tickets for partner airlines are priced based on a region-based chart found on the Miles&Smiles website, with prices ranging from 4,500 Miles to over 300,000 Miles.
As an example, an economy class flight from Canada (North America Region) to Türkiye costs 40,000 Miles, while a business class flight comes in at 65,000 Miles.
There is also a separate chart for one-way domestic flights on partner airlines with redemption costs ranging from 15,000 Miles in economy class to 30,000 in first class.
To book a Star Alliance award flight, start by signing in to your Miles&Smiles account and navigating to your account dashboard. Click on “Miles Transactions”
Then click on Star Alliance bookings.
You’ll now see a search portal that’s basically identical to the Turkish Airlines one but with the Star Alliance heading.
Unfortunately, this search mechanism is quite glitchy and not all the available award flights seems to show up. To get a more accurate sense of award flight availability, you can search with another Star Alliance airline like United Airlines and then call Turkish Airlines customer service to try to redeem for the flight(s) you find.
Your Miles&Smiles Miles can also be used to upgrade your cabin class on Turkish Airlines flights and Star Alliance flights.
The cost in Miles to upgrade your eligible one-way fare with Turkish Airlines is shown in the chart below. Just be aware that some fare classes won’t be eligible for these upgrades:
To use your Miles to upgrade a Star Alliance flight, you’ll need to be aware of the following terms and conditions:
Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles provides a chart listing the cost in Miles for Star Alliance upgrades across all regions. Upgrades range from 10,000 Miles for short domestic flights to 310,000 Miles for long-haul flights upgrading from business to first class. The chart is too large to add in this article, but you can reference the upgrade chart on the Miles&Smiles website here.
Your Miles&Smiles Miles can also be used to cover the cost of many travel perks and in-flight extras. These options include seat selection, extra baggage, airport lounge access, temporarily holding a ticket, transporting sports equipment on your flight, and on-board Wi-Fi.
The price for these redemptions varies based on factors like flight distance and route, cabin class, transit time, and whether your flight and/or departure airport is participating. You can find more information about these options on the Miles&Smiles redemption website.
Miles&Smiles Miles can also be redeemed for merchandise and gift cards through the airline’s shopping portal, Shop and Miles. However, this option is limited to Miles&Smiles members who have completed at least one verification critieria (e.g., earned Miles on an eligible flight or converted Miles from an eligible bank program).
The shopping portal lets you search for redemption options based on your country of residence, and provides a small selection of brand redemptions for Canadians. Since the airline is based in Türkiye, there are, unsurprisingly, considerably more brands and merchant websites available specifically for that region.
Given this, this option is likely to be of little benefit for most Canadians. That said, it might be a reasonable way to redeem a handful of Miles that you don’t intend to use for a flight or upgrade.
Turkish Miles&Smiles has a unique expiration structure that can be a bit confusing. The program rules say that “unless stated otherwise, Miles earned under the program (flight, hotel stay, car rental) expire at the end of the third full calendar year at 23:59 local time in Türkiye following their processing.”
We take this to mean that, for example, miles earned on April 23, 2026, are valid for three full years (to April 23, 2029) plus the remaining portion of that final calendar year (until December 31, 2029). This means that Miles earned early in a calendar year should be eligible for almost 4 full years, while Miles earned at the end of a calendar year will expire closer to the 3-year mark.
If you have Miles that are set to expire, Turkish Airlines will reach out to let you know via email or through the app/your account. Additionally, you’re given the option to extend the validity of your expiring Miles for an additional 3 calendar years at a cost of $20 USD per 1,000 Miles.
Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles program has four elite status levels: Classic, Classic Plus, Elite, and Elite Plus. To acquire and move up levels, you need to earn a specific number of Status Miles. Then once you’ve achieved elite status, you get to enjoy the benefits of that tier for two years.
To earn elite status with Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles, you need:
Status Miles are calculated daily and your balance reflects the number of miles you earned in the preceding 12-month period. Once you reach the necessary Status Miles threshold, your elite status will be automatically updated.
Your elite status is valid for two years from when you first achieve it. Additionally, the program offers lower thresholds and extended earning timelines for maintaining your status, making it easier to continue your enjoyment of the associated benefits.
For example, you can maintain your Classic Plus status for an additional two years if you earn either 17,000 Status Miles in the first year of your status or 35,000 Status Miles through both years at that level. These lowered thresholds bring the requirements down by around one-third.
As an elite member of the Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles program, you’ll gain access to a number of perks and benefits that expand as you move up the tiers.
Enjoy the basic benefits from above, plus:
At the Elite level, you get all the perks from the previous two tiers plus a great deal more:
At the top status level of Elite Plus, you get every perk from the earlier tiers, plus:
The Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles program went through a significant devaluation in 2024 creating limited opportunity for desirable redemptions. Add this negative shift in value to the fact that the program is already not a very accessible for Canadians, and we’re left with a limited selection of “sweet spots” to note.
That said, here are a few ways you may consider using your Miles if you’re looking to maximize your return:
Be aware that it can be very difficult to find award availability at the lower promotional prices and/or in premium cabins. Keep this in mind before your transfer points or spend too much energy focusing on earning with the Miles&Smiles program. Other Star Alliance programs like Aeroplan and United MileagePlus can provide very similar network access (though with different sweet spots) and are considerably more accessible thanks to Canadian-issue co-branded credit cards and transfer partners.
Although Turkish Airlines’ Miles&Smiles offers Canadian travellers the ability to earn and redeem points across many excellent airlines, its lack of a co-branded credit card and its underwhelming list of transfer partners limits its potential value for most travellers.
Unless you happen to fly to and within Türkiye frequently, you’ll be better off focusing your rewards strategy around a more accessible program like Aeroplan since both Air Canada and Turkish Airlines are part of Star Alliance, but earning Aeroplan points is considerably easier thanks to the many co-branded Aeroplan credit cards available in Canada.
That said, if you are planning to add Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles to your loyalty program roster, consider the following tips to help maximize the value you can enjoy:
For more ways to earn valuable travel rewards, check out guides to the best travel credit cards in Canada and the best overall credit cards in Canada.
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