Turkish Airlines. Direct booking. Any way to get cash price down?

[chrishond]

I need to buy 3 tickets from LHR, for onward travel, via Istanbul in the summer (booking directly on the Turkish airlines website)

Any ways to get the cash price down? Current promos, discount codes, Amex deals , cashback etc?

All help welcome.

[BA Flyer IHG Stayer]

In your almost duplicate post on the chat thread you say you’re going to Russia.

Given the dearth of airlines flying there at the moment I don’t see those airlines that are flying there to be doing any discounts if they can get people paying high prices.

[Mr. AC]

I’ve had to make similar bookings. You MIGHT consider exploring their reward program if you’re flexible with the dates. I’ve booked 3 tickets over the last year going Amex MR -> Marriott Bonvoy -> Turkish Miles & Smiles. The cost in Miles was 15000, to get those you need to transfer 45000 Marriott points which is 30000 Amex MR. Taxes were ~100 GBP, so total “cost” was around 400 GBP assuming you value Amex MR at 1p. You can get a better rate if you’re transferring via chunks of 60000 Marriott points. Transfer takes a bit of time since it’s 2-stage, I’d give it a week for safety.

Note that booking for other people using points from your account is possible, but can only be done over the phone (website is supposed to allow you to do it, but doesn’t), and 2 out of 3 times I tried to do it they had some sort of outage / issue in the call centre and couldn’t see reward availability visible on their website. I used the form on the website to leave a “complaint”, and someone called me back the next day who were able to book everything. I’m guessing there’s some central office that’d difficult to reach on the phone. Call centre is also able to reserve an award seat even if you don’t have the miles in your account yet, and then you get some amount of time to “pay” for the reservation in miles and cash, provided the flight is far out enough in the future.

So overall it’s a huge pain in the neck for normally not a lot of savings, but might be useful in some niche situations (e.g. if you have a pile of Marriott Bonvoy points you’re not planning to use).