Originally Posted by
aranjit
TK looks interesting. There have some cheap tickets it seems and I can fly with them to India vs OZ. Is there any issues with flying through Turkey recently? If I get *G via another airlines FF program I assume I will be less likely to get opup? Why do you find the miles more valuable?
I used to use the OZ program, as I was interested in the lifetime *G, but I switched because I found OZ miles are very hard to use. The award chart is generally more expensive, and OZ is very restrictive about who you can issue award tickets for (only certain family members, after submitting documentation and similar). TK's redemption process is much less bureaucratic than OZ (although it is still much less streamlined than, say, UA).
The other big advantage of TK comes once you reach the Elite plus level, where you get 2x upgrade vouchers a year (worth at least $1k or so in my book). There have been some excellent business class fares US-India recently (in the $2k range) - if you're willing to spend the extra money for a few more expensive roundtrips to qualify for Elite Plus, the requalification requirement should be possible to hit on your "normal" travel pattern (2x economy tix to India, 1x to Europe).