sydunipete

I've been Turkish Elite (*A Gold) for several years but I'm at my wits end due to endless IT challenges and the difficulties in reliably finding and booking award tickets.

I would meet the annual Aegean requirements for Gold (disregarding Covid) and I like the family pooling. I travel to Greece more often than I would travel to Turkey.

Has anybody else made the jump from TK to A3 and what are your experiences. Is the grass greener on the Aegean side of the fence? I'm not aware of any status match offer (from TK or ITA) but if there is one I'd appreciate a point in the right direction.

Many thanks.

djjaguar64

What do you consider as Greener Pastures? If you fly to Greece most of the time I would recommend A3 and The M & B program. Turkish is a great airline and it has International exposure but not A3. A3 is a wonderful airline and we have been members since 2011.

sydunipete

Thanks. I fly to Greece more often than to Turkey and I can't see that changing.

Most years I would meet the A3 segment requirement for gold but even in years that I don't I fly enough miles elsewhere to retain status.

stupidhead

I've noticed though that TK is more generous with status miles on some *A tickets (e.g. UA, SQ) than A3 and TK offers a 2-year requalification option (37,500 over 2 years or 25,000 over 1 year). But A3 tends to play nicer with LH group tickets evidently.

I'm looking to jump ship from Asiana to one of these so I've been studying both airlines' earn charts/qualification/requal requirements.

sydunipete

Yes - the 2 year window with TK is a big plus. I've used wheretocredit.com to look at earn rates and there are swings and round abouts. Long-haul I fly mostly SQ and TG, within Europe I often find myself on LH.

johnirvine

I have been both TK Elite Plus and Aegean Gold for many years. My experience is that both are useful but for very different purposes.

During the past year, almost all airlines have made it very difficult indeed to redeem business class tickets on other cooperating alliance airlines. With TK, it is easy to book X class redemption tickets but the taxes and fees make this a ridiculous prospect since the end price is almost the same as a mileage-earning economy ticket. TK has also made it all but impossible to book I class business tickets on both its flights and those of airline partners. However, availability is still comparatively good for J class business upgrades from any revenue economy class fare (J class is also used by TK as its lowest revenue fare bucket for business). Another big advantage of TK is that E+ cardholders get two system-wide upgrades from economy to business once a year - I normally use these to upgrade a P class BER-IST-BKK-IST-BER return ticket costing around €650. To conclude: TK Miles and Smiles is great if (1) you fly intercontinental at least a couple of times a year and use TK; and (2) you use mileage solely to upgrade revenue tickets to business.

Aegean M&B is great for those who live in Greece or Cyprus, and for those who are not really frequent flyers but want to benefit from *A benefits when they do fly. Maintaining A3*G is also extremely easy and typically requires less that €1k ticket spend per year. And for this minimal spend, you get four A3 one-sector upgrades per year. However, redeeming M&B miles on long distance business tickets is dire: I have over a million miles and always find there is little or no availability, or that the taxes and fees are massively more than those with LH Miles and More (with which I collect about 500k per year). To conclude: M&B is good if you're Hellenic based, don't fly much and don't need intercontinental business redemption flights.

In your position, Sydunipete, I would stick with TK and try to achieve E+ to get the annual two system-wide upgrades. And I would use mileage solely to upgrade discount economy tickets to J class business. And to avoid TK's disastrous IT and poor call centre (especially compared to Aegean's excellent call centre), you perhaps need to cultivate links with your most-used TK airline office. When staff know you, they will often move heaven and earth to help you with redemption bookings.

sydunipete

Thanks for that detailed response. I had a great relationship with my local sales office and they were universally excellent until a recent staff change. Now they are on par with the call centre.

I typically look at my TK redemptions as flying business class for the price of an economy ticket but I haven't considered the upgrade approach. I'll look into that.

I've come close to E+ a few times but never quite crossed the line.

stupidhead

Does TK really allow upgrades on any paid economy ticket? That's extremely generous. TK's website says only YBMAHS are eligible for upgrades though on the *A upgrades page so I wasn't sure if that was actually the case.