sailsml

I booked two business class award tickets from IAD to IST four months ago, when the price was 45K miles per ticket. A few weeks ago, Turkish changed the departure time from 4:45 PM to 12:45 PM. There is a 10:45 PM flight that we would much rather take, as it will be a lot easier to sleep and minimize jet lag. But I have called three different times to customer service, and also emailed with the IAD airport office, and they all keep telling me there are no business class seats available for any other flights that whole week (September 2024). I see available seats, but they're 130K miles.

Can anyone please explain my rights in this situation? Do I have the right to switch to any flight that still has seats available for purchase, even if business class awards are sold out? Or do I only have the right to switch to a flight that has business class award seats available? And if it's the latter, do they have to be the same type of "saver" award seat that I booked? The flights I booked are C class. I would appreciate any tips you may have for this Turkish newbie. I'm tempted to just cancel the flights, but then I'll have a bunch of devalued Turkish miles that I'll never be able to use.

SK AAR

You should be able to (invol) rebook as long as award seats are available; you don't need promotional award seats to be available in order invol. rebook. Try calling again.

kaspars

well, apparently not that easy after they changed the awards system ... I would hope a feedback form request could be handled more efficiently, but no guarantees...

sailsml

Thanks for the encouragement to keep persisting. While I never had any luck calling, I did send an email message to [email protected], the Dulles service center. It took me a few days to hear back, but eventually a nice woman wrote me back and we had several exchanges to get things changed. She even called me one day to discuss my options! She said the flights I wanted were showing as "waitlist", meaning the home office would need to approve them. But after about a week, and one followup email to ask for an update, I just received two confirmation emails for my husband and I, for the new flights we requested. My faith in Turkish is now at least partially restored, and I'm looking forward to trying out their business class!

SK AAR

Thanks for the update/reporting back with the good news. Glad it worked out well for you. Personally, I have only had similar good experiences with the TK ticket offices here in Denmark.

flyerby

My preferred way nowadays to handle schedule changes or flight cancellations for revenue or award tickets (without business upgrades) is using TK mobile app.

sailsml

I did initially try to book new flights through the TK mobile app, when I first received the email about the flight changes. But it showed no other flights available for me to switch to. I also tried the website, same result. Is there a way through the TK mobile app that I could have contacted customer service to request help? I'm not seeing one, but I might be missing it.

SK AAR

There is none. My experience is the same as yours. Often neither TK website or app will provide any suitable rebooking options, if any at all. To think that you will be able to deal with schedule changes or cancellations in the app is way too optimistic/will most likely not be possible.

kaspars

seems not any more the case...
They wouldn't even try to book the available full award seats any more, but push for the available one I class option...

The feedback exchange also didn't help:
"Based on your feedback we would like to inform you that different numbers of quotas are allocated to the website and call center systems for eligible flights, and there are differences in availability between systems.
As we mentioned on previous feedback you have been informed for only available flight on mentioned dates during your call."

TK does all what they can to destroy the loyalty after the devaluation of miles

flyerby

This is extremely sad
What’s TK next step in case of schedule change? For a W booking class ticket, you’ll be able to only rebook into another flight with W class availability or get a full refund 😡

kaspars

I hope for revenue tickets there still will be better flexibility... I was referring to award tix issued with miles

SK AAR

No, this is not what was reported by kaspars. I'm quite sure that for revenue tickets you would be rebooked into any booking class available (in the same cabin). The issue is if TK will no longer rebook the cheap promotional I class tickets into the the much more expensive standard award (on TK flights only) - that would be a very negative change.

To be honest. with the recent devaluation and reported changes with TK M&S I have no hope of booking TK awards again and have stopped crediting to TK M&S. I'm still TK Elite for another 2 years but after that I will have jumped ship completely.

kaspars

Just out of curiosity: to which program did you shift?

SK AAR

I havn't made up my mind yet. I'm member of LH M/M and SAS Eurobonus (although the latter will most likely change to Skyteam soon) and I might even still be a member of ANA Mileage Club; but no status with neither of them anymore.

kaspars

yes, i see... but none of the above programs seem to be any better, and ANA will devaluate their program soon as well if I remember correctly...