AMAZING DEAL: Star Alliance Gold in one trip. Up to 4x status miles on Turkish Airlines for invited members

Turkish Airlines occupies a soft spot for many in ‘the hobby'. They have been known to execute generous status matches for years and their re-qualification criteria appears to be pretty reasonable too, with only 37500 status miles required over 2 years to maintain Star Alliance Gold. Lately according to Status Matcher they seem to be offering ‘challenges' whereby you have to earn a lower threshold in a shorter amount of time.

It seems their latest promotion could be of significant interest then. Until 15th June 2017  you can earn 2x or 4x the status miles in economy or business class respectively. Your flights must be marketed and operated by Turkish Airlines on international routes.

For context, to qualify for Turkish Airlines Elite (their lowest tier which gives Star Alliance Gold) you need to earn 40 000 Status Miles within 12 consecutive months.

The wording of the T&Cs is unclear on a couple of things:

• whether the promotion begins now or on 8th March but given it is a 5 day difference, it will probably not matter too much for many readers unless you exclusively buy last-minute tickets.
• whether the multiplier applies to the base miles or flown miles according to the fare bucket of your ticket.

To be conservative you should assume it is the lower of the base or flown miles and then multiply that by 2 or 4 depending on your class of travel.

This will mean if you are travelling on full fare economy or business class you will earn slightly less than the 2x or 4x headline because the base mileage is above 100% of the flown miles.

You can use a combination of GCMap to Turkish Airlines' online calculator to figure out which situation applies to you.

For example, if you are flying London to Istanbul which has a distance of 1557 miles, economy class flights earn the following base miles, (and total status miles after this promotion is applied in brackets):

W,P,F,U,V = 25% flown miles (50% flown miles)

T,L,G = 50% flown miles (100% flown miles)

M,H,S,E,Q,A,O = 100% flown miles (200% flown miles)

B,Y = 125% flown miles (200% flown miles)

while Business class earns:

K,J,Z = 135% flown miles (400% flown miles)

C,D = 150% flown miles (400% flown miles)

If you can pick a route that is longer than 5000 miles one way (e.g. Istanbul to New York which is 5019 miles) you can go from zero to Star Alliance Gold in a return business class flight. The status is valid for 2 years remember!

whether you will enjoy your trip, or be admitted into the USA is another matter though…

The terms and conditions below:

• Only members notified by Turkish Airlines directly can take advantage of this promotion. 
• This  promotion is valid from 8nd March 2017 [sic] to 15th June 2017
• The related promotion will be applied only for Turkish Airlines scheduled flights. Promotion is not permitted on Turkish Airlines codeshare flights and Star Alliance member airline flights
• Only  international flights are valid for this promotion.
• Only flights issued to the Miles&Smiles account during reservation, at the time of ticketing and before flight will be considered valid. Flights issued after flight is not valid. Miles credited after flight is not subject to this promotion.
• All reservation classes (Economy/Business) excluding award ticket classes are valid for this promotion.
• 2 times status miles will be accrued on economy flights, 4 times status miles will be accrued on business flights.
• Turkish Airlines has the right to change terms and conditions of the promotion.
• Usage rights of this promotion can not be transferred to third parties. In case of violation of this rule Turkish
• Airlines reserves the right to take legal actions against those concerned.