Based on my experience, it is not allowed. I did a one-way award redemption last year, HKG-IST-ARN and wanted to do a stop over in Istanbul but the agent told me that I'd be charged for 2 separate awards if I wanted to take the flight the following day from IST-ARN.

calculate taxes and fuel surcharges
 

I only read your question right now (a few months after you asked...). I booked a ticket without checking for the taxes before, and was shocked afterwards that I had to pay 700 USD for 2 passengers in C (absolutely correct amount, UA won't charge YQ for partners where TK will charge it, basically the same as if you would book the award with LH who also do charge it). Another routing would only have been 250 USD (no YQ on that partner).

So for everyone else: Check the taxes + fuel surcharges before you book an Award, and here is how to do it:
Call up ITA Matrix ( https://matrix.itasoftware.com/ ) and
find your flights (there is an explanation for the advanced routing codes on the site, or search here on FT) to find your exact flight numbers.
Click the button with the qouted price for your exact fligths and... Voila, there it is (ignore the ticket price for the cheapest available fare in your desired booking class, add all other charges including YQ which TK will charge you). Takes 20-30 seconds once you know how to use it.
(the TK agents at the sales Office Need 30 minutes to do it :rolleyes: but of course they also have to issue the ticket).

award ticket on ET
 

I am trying to book an award ticket on ET but TK agents do not seem to see the availability that I can check on ANA website. Did anyone have any luck on redeeming TK miles on ET?

Also, when I call TK, they quote me an incorrect amount (different from their website and award search result). How can I get the correct amount when i call the call center?

The amount they quote might be higher because
a.) that agent really knows what he is doing and found TK flights with no available saver award seats, so he used guaranteed availability (only possible on TK and he will clearly tell you he did. It's a good sign because only knowledgeable agents will do this. Politely decline and say unfortunately you don't have /don't want to spend that amount and there should be a partner award available at saver level).

b.) they found a flight with mixed partners (see the very first posts in this thread: TK + one *A partner on oneway = ok, ET + ET on oneway = ok, but SA +ET or ET+ LH would be two separate awards - you can combine them in one ticket but would have to pay the higher amount)

c.) most likely, they just got it wrong and are qouting you the wrong price, see some reports in this thread. The ticket office should figure it out. Make sure to listen closely while they want to ticket it, and politely tell them "it'S zone A to zone B in business class, oneway, one passager, just one partner airline and no stopover, just a connection = should be amount XXXX according to the chart". I did this for an NZ award with the phone agent already, she apologized and I only paid the correct amount.

I have no experience with booking ET via TK, but NZ, CA and LX and I suppose ET will just be the same:
Most agents are clueless about booking or finding partner airlines (or they don't want to). 20% of them tell me outright they can't book other airlines than TK.... I keep calling, if I get the same agent again, I wait 4-6 hours. It usually takes 3 - 7 calls to get something booked.
Others report that an email to their sales office does all the magic.
So if you tried less than 20 times: just keep trying.... and by 20 times I really do mean 20 times. I seem to be very lucky that it only takes me 5 calls on average from what I read here, and I suppose it's because I am elite+ which the system realizes and connects me to better trained agents.

Another data point: most agents seem to only check TK. So if you let them check, wait for the "no availability..." and then politely say that there should be a partner airline flight on this route, ET 123 leaving ABC on Jan 01 at 01:01...., some of them will suddenly find availability....

Thank you for the detailed response. This is very helpful. I have ET+ET one way, and my understanding is that it should be the same with TK+TK because now TK applies the same miles for *A and TK for the same route. Am I missing something here?

I also called an office and they had to ask a supervisor after insisting that I could book ET flights only on staralliance dot com. But finally they got back to me and said they could book it for me but another amount came up. I am trying to book South America to Middle east, which should be 54500 according to both their online system and the new website about the change in program. The US call center quoted me 55000, which is different. Now a ticketing office quoted me 56500. None of them makes sense and I explained it to the agents but they all said this is what the system gives and they cannot do anything...I already transferred the exact amount to my TK account from CITI so I don't want to wait again for another 2000 miles to be transferred, so I want to correct the amount required and pay 54500 as it is in the website. Is there any way to make this happen?

TK has some awesome redemption rates. But it's a painful process to book it...
I try to politely correct them if something is wrong. If you are talking to the right person, it helps. But sometimes it's just not worth the effort...

If I want to book that long range flight in C which is very affordable with TK miles, I am willing to call 4 times, spend 1 hour on the phone with them and drive to the airport + wait for them to ticket it (1 hours total including driving).

If it was just for the 2.000 miles, I would log into my M&S account, buy them for 60 USD (they usually post immediately) and be happy that it doesn't take another 8 calls + 2 hours to fix it. Just my personal opinion.
I should actually be allowed to overdraw my account by 10.000 miles since I am elite+, but they didn't know how to do it so I bought the 9k miles I was missing to get the ticketing done.

Just be aware that TK might give you a ticketing limit of 6 weeks ("trophy"), while ET might cancel your reservation after 3 days, 7 days, 10 days or whatever ( I don't know for ET). Then your seats would be available again and might be gone when you try to book too late....

Reservation and/or ticket issuing by email
 

Some posters mentioned they email their sales office to issue an award reservation or a ticket.

If you do this, just be aware that:
a.) Your sales office might not have a person with the authority to create a partner award reservation (they refered me back to the call center).
---> if your local sales office is good at this via email: great! Lucky you. ^
If they tell you "no availability": don't believe them.
If they tell you they can't do it: you are not alone...


b.) if you pay by emailing them forms, (they told me we'll do it this way to do me a favor and save me a second trip there since their system had been down last Friday when I wanted to pay and have the ticket issued):
they'll ask you to email a form with your credit card number, the full billing address AND a copy of the card AND a copy of your ID by email. :eek:
If you like the idea of sending this kind of data unencrypted...
also filling the form out and copying all this would take me about 40 minutes, and I would still not know if they did it properly
----> if the sales office ist just a trip of less than 40 minutes for you, I would absolutely prefer going there in person.

c.) After booking several awards, I realized that 2 out of 3 agents simply can't or don't know how to process an award correctly, to a point you can't work with them on the phone, or they'll hand it over to a coworker when you visit the sales office. The third one will be able to do what you want, BUT often makes mistakes that can be helped by politely coaching him/her "no availability..." "hmmm, that's strange, there should be flight nr. abc on airline XX as a staralliance partner award, could you please look again?" or quoting you the wrong amount of miles. Only 1 out of 8 will do it perfectly. My point is: I'd rather have to call three times and be at the office in person to make sure they get it done while the seats are available and that they charge the right amount....

Most phone agents and ALL of the agents in my sales office are really nice people who are always very friendly to me, they are patient if it takes longer, and they try everything they can do help. All I am saying here is that it might be much work or even a lot of hard work to get a TK award issued when it's not on TK flights. For some routes, it's worth it. :D

I have successfully redeemed 2 LH C awards via TK IAH office - very proper and used docusign to clear CC payment.

OK, how do you make them fix the incorrect miles? I have contacted the local office multiple times, they are aware of the issue but they don't know how to fix it. They say if they ask the system to quote the fare, it is 54500 but when they actually try to book it, the system gives 56500 even when they use ADD as a transit not stopover (which I told them to do in order to fix the problem). When I contacted the TK office in Istanbul, after so many transfers (and two trials), I finally got a lady who seemed to understand the issue but she said she can do it only by emailing to a supervisor. I was told that the supervisor would call me within 2 hours but nothing happened for a few days, so I called again, they said they only send an email again to the "relevant team".... I am not really sure what I can do fix this problem. The ticket is already back to inventory because it is cancelled, yet I still see it available...Any ideas how to instruct the agent to get the correct quote?

Ask them to add the missing miles as a goodwill gesture, so they can proceed with ticketing.

I did but they said only supervisors can do it, so they issued another to ask them...It is kinda insane...They should empower the CS agents more....It seems like for everything, they have to ask the supervisor but it has to be over email etc...Well, I learned my lesson about this airline...

Just booked via IAH office and they were able to handle everything via e-mail. Only thing I did not like was that they wanted a picture of my CC and ID sent via e-mail which isn't exactly the most secure way to do things.

So just to report back on my previous case. Turkish booking system has a problem with booking award tickets on *A members if the ticket involves a transit in a third region. First, they will quote you the number of required miles shown in their website but when you actually book it the amount changes to a higher one if the third region requires more miles when you end up going there. For example, if you are traveling from US to Middle East region, the table shows 47000 miles for business one way but when the actual ticket is booked, their system charges 49000 miles if it is on Ethiopian or Egyptian Air transiting in North Africa. The same thing happened when I tried to book a ticket from South America region to Middle East region. A one-way business class ticket on Star Alliance members would require 54500 miles but when I tried to book this ticket on Ethiopian Air, their system could issue the ticket only for 56500 miles. This is so odd because transiting in North Africa is more direct route and requires much less traveling than traveling through IST. As the transit point does not, should not count as the final destination, they either should fix their system so that it can issue tickets for the right advertised amount (as well as what agents first quote) or they should have a clear clause in their program rules. I have read the rules but nothing related to this issue is addressed. So I booked my ticket with the higher (incorrect) amount and I initiated a complaint against TK with DOT. DOT took the case but they said they will sanction the airline only if they have enough complaints from customers, so I guess one complaint would NOT make DOT to penalize TK. If you are facing/faced the same issue, please complain to DOT, it is only a few min work but this is the only way that we can force companies to do the right thing. I am not very happy with how TK handled the case, so if DOT penalizes them, at least they learn the lesson and know why this kind of practice is not acceptable.

That explains why TK quoted me 98 000 miles for ARN-ADD-HRE with ET in business class (return trip), while the award chart tells me Europe -> Southern Africa is 90 000 miles.
Middle and North Africa -> Southern Africa requires 98 000. Can't believe their system calculates the required miles based on the transit zone! Is there no way around this?

If you're transiting in a more expensive zone, isn't it fair that you pay the higher price? Otherwise I could book NYC-LON via JNB and claim I should pay only the NYC-LON miles.