So, here is the final chapter of my Turkish Hawaii booking fiasco:

I had started this booking last April. I originally found 4 X class seats on United for a good return date for me last April for LIH-DEN-FSD. For some reason, Turkish does not have FSD (Sioux Falls, SD airport) in their system. For that reason, any awards that involve FSD, you have no choice but to work through a ticket office; The Los Angeles office was able to somehow manually build this for me. No choice but to do this through email for me. So I booked the return as a one-way.

I subsequently set up expert flyer X class United award alerts for my trip to Hawaii. In October, the inventory I need opened up. This time, no response from the Los Angeles office, but Chicago manually built the FSD-DEN-LIH itinerary and I thought I was good to go!

Note I had some backup flights using American set up, but American eliminated out FSD-PHX flight making those not viable. So, in January, I cancelled those reservations as my Turkish tickets looked just fine on the United side. I thought I was good to go.

Then, disaster strikes on Feb 14, when I am due to fly Feb 16. I had been checking my tickets on the United side almost daily looking for any ticket problems. (Happened on my one way outbound to Hawaii booking once already that caused me a lot of pain cleaning up with the Chicago office in December.) I noted my my ticket to Hawaii had again broken on the United side. So I call, the Turkish number, and as usual, they can't do anything since the FSD-DEN segment which had changed due to United flight schedule changes was not showing a problem in their system. They told me to contact a ticket office to fix.

So, I started asking both LA and Chicago for help, but honestly, they just could not move fast enough, not to mention telling me a few times there was no problem. So, I'm desperate at this point, and thankfully United still has 4 x class tickets on the DEN-LIH segment on Feb. 16; so I moved over UR to united and booked for 25K each. However, there is literally no way for me to get to Denver on Feb 16. (Ironically, the worst part was knowing united was still holding 4 seats for me that I could not access due to Turkish incompetence.) So, I decided to bite the bullet, and pay cash for Delta one ways (4 X $359 one way) via MSP to Denver on Feb 15, and stay at the Hyatt House there. (booked very nice suite for 16k hyatt). As we are just about to push back from the gate in Sioux Falls on Feb. 15, I get the email from the LA office I'd been waiting for; they had fixed the Turkish ticket.....ughhhh! But it was too late, so I had them cancel and redeposit the miles. (Note, since I was already en route, I had to cancel since simply not enough time to fix again to a simple DEN-LIH routing not to mention the stress level. So I got my 30k Turkish back, but spent 100k United (ur points in reality) miles and $1436 to get there. Not a deal....

So, I am still watching my return tickets too. These always look good on the United side despite a flight change on the DEN-FSD segment that had happened months ago. However, I felt I could not chance this, so I move another 188k to united to book a backup home at 47.1K one way each. So, when time to check in, I go to the Turkish ticket first, and was able to check in without any issues, so I cancelled the United booking and redeposited the 188K United miles. (But, now those UR points are trapped at United....)

So what did I learn in all this:

1. Using Turkish works better on simple one segment flights from major airports. If Turkish does not have your airport in their system, you have no choice but to work with ticket offices. I had the most success with US based offices. If you are a regional flyer like me, think hard if positioning separately may be a better option. Price of that segment while still getting the Hawaii flight for 7.5k is probably still a steal.....
2. If you work with ticket offices by email, you just can't make last minute fixes fast enough.
3. Watch your ticket on the United side like a hawk. I do think the Turkish phone agents could have helped me if my airport was in their system.
4. Using Turkish is not for the faint of heart; if you want it to be easier, just pay the higher United or other sky alliance partner prices.

Anyone else have suggestions for other things I could have done better, or advice for others based on this?