<snip>
With that in mind, here are a few of the most important rules and nuances of Miles & Smiles:

• Miles & Smiles prices award flights on region-based award charts.
• There are two levels of award availability for Turkish-operated flights: regular and promotional. Regular doesn't technically have a name. It is just "award ticket" when you see it in award flight search results. Promo space (still referred to as "limited space capacity" in the terms and conditions) means fewer seats are available at a much lower mileage cost than the regular "award ticket" space.
• Award ticket prices for flights within the same region cost 15,000, 25,000 and 40,000 miles round-trip for economy, business and first class, respectively.
• You can book one-way awards for half the price of a round-trip.
• You can redeem miles for anyone besides yourself, but you need to register them in your Miles & Smiles account first.
• If you need 10,000 additional miles or less to issue an award ticket, you can buy them at a rate of 25 euros (about $27) per 1,000 miles.
• Fuel surcharges are not charged on United flights and are somewhat reasonable on Turkish flights, but can be problematic on some Star Alliance carriers.
• Award tickets can be canceled or changed for a fee of $25.
• One open-jaw is allowed on a round-trip ticket. (An open-jaw is an itinerary when you fly into one city and out of another. An example would be New York to London, then Paris to New York.)
• One stopover is allowed in Istanbul on the outbound or return of a Turkish Airlines-operated award itinerary. (A stopover is when you stay in a city along the path of your itinerary for a period of time. An example would be Houston to Istanbul to Male (Maldives) and back to Houston, where you spend days in both Istanbul and Male, even though Male is actually your ultimate destination, not Istanbul.)
• Award tickets can have a maximum of eight segments: four on the inbound and four on the outbound. (A segment is an actual take-off and touch-down. So, Los Angeles to Houston to Istanbul to Athens would be three segments for that portion of the ticket. If you repeat the same flights on the return, that'd be a total of six segments.)
• You can put award tickets on hold for 72 hours, even with zero miles in your account. This is helpful if you're waiting on Citi transfers to show up in your account. Typically, transfers from Citi take about a day to reach your Miles & Smiles account.

If this is your first entry into redeeming Turkish miles, I recommend reviewing the program FAQs. The award ticket terms and conditions can also be very helpful. With the nitty-gritty details out of the way, let's look at booking award tickets online.
<snip>