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In late June, Turkish Airlines launched an appealing new challenge. Any Turkish Miles & Smiles member who flies Turkish Airlines to six continents between June 27 and October 27, 2025 will be rewarded with one million miles. That's incredible, considering the numerous Turkish Airlines sweet spots available.
If you're considering booking this, note that Turkish Airlines just updated the terms of this promotion to limit eligible flights to those ticketed by July 8, 2025.
This comes at a perfect time for my wife and me. We are currently traveling through Europe, with plans to travel to a couple of different continents over the next few months anyway. Plus, this new challenge aligns perfectly with another challenge we're undertaking this year: visiting 40 countries in 2025 to celebrate turning 40 this year.
Over the past week, we've developed a plan to tackle this challenge — completing the entire challenge between now and mid-August. Here's how we plan to earn two million Turkish Miles & Smiles through the Six Continents Challenge.
Our Turkish Airlines Six Continents Plan
South America & Europe
The main reason it was appealing to jump on this challenge is that we need to head to South America for RoboCup — an annual robot soccer competition we help organize. With the best award options being business class for 85k miles plus several hundred in taxes and fees (and economy awards costing even more), I'd been dragging my feet on locking in plans. Then, this challenge popped up.
For our dates, a one-way Turkish Airlines flight to São Paulo cost around $1,000 each. A round-trip returning to Europe? Around $1,100 each. So, it was a no-brainer to add on a return flight to complete another continent.
So, we hopped up from our stay in Tirana, Albania to Zagreb, Croatia (country #24 of our 40-country challenge) using 6,000 United miles each. After a few nights in the Croatian capital, we'll fly to São Paulo, Brazil via Istanbul. Every itinerary we found requires an overnight in Istanbul, so we stretched our layover as long as we could to visit one of our favorite cities in the world.
After RoboCup, we're flying back to Athens, Greece (ATH) to achieve the European continent and position for our next flights…
North America & Asia
Our next necessary travel plans take us to the Pacific Northwest at the end of July. So, we explored routes and dates until we found a budget-friendly option: Athens, Greece (ATH) to Seattle (SEA), with a return trip from Seattle to Amman, Jordan (AMM). The cost: just 883.58 euros ($1,036) round-trip.
Returning to Dubai would have been even cheaper, but we'd happily pay ~$55 more each to avoid 100°F (40°C) peak summertime temperatures. Plus, the Grand Hyatt Amman is a Category 1 property, and our dates cost just 5,000 points per night.
Related: 12 Best Hyatt redemptions under 12,000 points per night
Once we reach Amman, we'd have achieved four continents (and visited six countries) for a total flight cost of just $2,133 each — including travel to two destinations we need to visit anyway, plus a visit to one of the jewels of the Middle East.
Africa
Jordan borders Egypt — the entirety of which is considered part of Africa for this challenge — with affordable flights connecting the two. However, we need to fly Turkish Airlines through Istanbul to earn the African continent. And unfortunately, Turkish Airlines isn't competing on price on these routes. Pretty much every day costs more than $500 one-way, with some brutal flight times.
Rather than book these expensive flights, we figured we would split up the trip. First, we'll fly from Amman (AMM) to Istanbul (IST) for just 7,500 Aeroplan points. After a few days of properly visiting Turkish Airlines' hub city, we booked a relatively cheap $269 one-way flight to Cairo (CAI) to check off the African continent — plus position for our last flights of the challenge.
Oceania
There's only one eligible country listed in Turkish Airlines' (now-deleted) terms for the Oceania region: Australia. Turkish Airlines operates routes to Australia from Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. But, to count for this challenge, all flights must connect through Istanbul.
Knowing this would be an expensive leg, we started by searching for the cheapest flight options to Australia from any region. The cheapest one-way option we could find was from Cairo (CAI) to either Sydney (SYD) or Melbourne (MEL). For our dates, Melbourne was the cheapest option.
Since this itinerary includes a whopping 20 hours on flights, we considered splurging for business class for around $2,400 each one-way. However, that would have made our final cost for completing this challenge a lot less impressive. We settled for economy for just $767 one-way.
Speaking of the total cost…
Our Total Cost and Earnings
In total, we are paying just over $3,100 per person to complete this challenge:
- Zagreb (ZAG) to São Paulo (GRU) to Athens (ATH): 936.01 euros = $1,098 each
- Athens (ATH) to Seattle (SEA) to Amman (AMM): 883.58 euros = $1,036 each
- Istanbul (IST) to Cairo (CAI): 10,775.95 TRY = $269 each
- Cairo (CAI) to Melbourne (MEL): 36,627.80 EGP = $738 each
In the past two weeks, my wife finished earning the sign-up bonus on her Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, and I completed my spending requirement on my new The World of Hyatt Credit Card. That means we are in the rare circumstance where we aren't working on earning a credit card sign-up bonus.
My primary travel card is the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card, thanks to its 3X points earnings on travel (on up to $150,000 in combined purchases across a few categories) plus excellent travel protections. However, we're typically only paying a couple of hundred dollars in taxes and fees for an award flight or a cheap cash fare.
For such a large out-of-pocket spend, I opted to charge these flights to the American Express Platinum Card®, which earns 5X points on flights booked directly with airlines (on up to $500,000 on these purchases per calendar year). In total, I'll earn over 31,000 Membership Rewards points on these purchases.
- You may be eligible for as high as 175,000 Membership Rewards® points after you spend $8,000 in eligible purchases on your new Card in your first 6 months of Card Membership. Welcome offers vary and you may not be eligible for an offer. Apply to know if you're approved and find out your exact welcome offer amount - all with no credit score impact. If you're approved and choose to accept the Card, your score may be impacted.
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- $895 annual fee.
- Terms Apply.
- Rates & Fees
- Earn 5X points for flights booked directly with airlines or with American Express Travel® (up to $500,000 in purchases per calendar year).
- Earn 5X points on prepaid hotels booked with American Express Travel®.
- Earn 5X points on Fine Hotels + Resorts® and The Hotel Collection bookings.
In addition to one million bonus miles from this promotion, we will also earn just over 25,000 Turkish miles each from the flights themselves. That's decent earnings and just enough miles to earn Turkish Airlines Classic Plus elite status. But we have higher ambitions than that.
Completing a Turkish Airlines Status Match
Before we booked any flights, my wife and I applied for a Turkish Airlines status match. We will be flying this entire challenge in economy (unless we get an appealing paid upgrade offer), so we could really use any elite perks we can get to make this adventure more pleasant.
We both currently hold Asiana Diamond elite status — which grants Star Alliance Gold benefits on Star Alliance airlines. However, we must credit our flights to Turkish Miles & Smiles to get credit for the million-mile challenge. Sure, we could try presenting our Asiana elite status card at check-in and at lounges. However, we wouldn't receive benefits such as free seat selection and extra luggage allowances.
Thankfully, Turkish Airlines offers an unpublished status match and challenge. Here's how it works:
- Match an equivalent status to Turkish Elite status to receive a four-month trial.
- During that trial, complete one Turkish Airlines international flight to extend the status for an additional eight months, totaling one year.
- Earn 15,000 elite status miles during that first year to get Elite for another year — for two years in total.
My wife's status match from American Airlines AAdvantage Platinum Pro (Oneworld Emerald) was approved with only a bit of trouble — primarily due to American Airlines no longer printing membership cards.
Unfortunately, I just lost Oneworld Emerald status after holding it continuously since 2016. When I tried to match my British Airways Silver (Oneworld Sapphire) status, I was denied. Turkish Airlines reps claimed that Oneworld Sapphire isn't equivalent to Star Alliance Gold. Despite providing details to refute that claim, Turkish Airlines won't budge.
Surprisingly, Miles & Smiles will match from other Star Alliance carriers, so I attempted to match my Asiana Diamond status next. However, I was denied again due to having no flight activity posted in the past two months — as I've been flying mostly award flights, plus a couple of one-off non-alliance flights.
While that's a bummer, at least my wife was able to score Turkish Airlines Elite status for this challenge — unlocking free seat selection, lounges, premium check-in counters, and more. Plus, she will easily extend that status for a full two years.
Final Thoughts
Travel conflicts prevented us from participating in the SAS EuroBonus Points Millionaire challenge last year, and our 40-country goal will keep us from earning 25 years of JetBlue Mosaic status. But Turkish Airlines' Six Continents million-mile bonus challenge came at a perfect time for us. By leveraging travel we already need to do with some inexpensive fares, we will unlock more than a million Turkish Miles & Smiles miles each for a reasonable price of around $3,100 each.
Stay tuned for future updates as we fly more than 38,000 flight miles in the next five weeks!
For rates and fees of the cards mentioned in this post, please visit the following links: American Express Platinum Card® (Rates & Fees)
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