Amended: My Crazy Miles & Smiles Adventure: Part One

It started innocuously enough, with a post on a Facebook page I follow. Turkish Airlines announced a promotion to celebrate that it would now be flying to six continents, Antarctica excepted. Anybody who flew to all six continents on Turkish Airlines from Istanbul would be awarded 1,000,000 Miles & Smiles reward points, to be used within three years on Turkish Airlines.

My initial thought was “who would be crazy enough to do this?” But the promotion lingered in my mind, and after a few days I started looking at the math. It would cost about.CDN $10,000, ($US7,000) but 1 million reward Miles would garner about 10 business class flights, worth roughly $50,000. All of a sudden, it didn’t seem so crazy.

Of course, it would only make financial sense if I did it in economy, and this would entail four or five very long, overnight flights, something I do my best to avoid. There’s also the small problem of me not being a good flyer, really not enjoying turbulence. But I had a few weeks to spare, and I was getting itchy feet to travel again, so I threw caution to the wind and signed up.

It was a good thing. I booked a few flights quickly because less than 10 days after the promotion was announced, Turkish Airlines changed the criteria to limit the promotion to persons who had already booked at least one flight by July 8. I suspect this was because there was too much interest and Turkish Airlines got nervous about the amount of points it would have to give away.

So having decided to do it, the next dilemma was where to go. Sydney, Australia was easy as it was the only stop Turkish Airlines makes in Australia. For South America, the airline flies to Caracas, Venezuela, which was enticing. However, I needed a visa to visit Venezuela and neither the consulate in Toronto, nor the Embassy in Ottawa were issuing visas or even accepting phone calls. I read on the Internet it was necessary to go either to Panama City or Mexico City to get a visa, which seemed a bit excessive. Thus I settled on flying to São Paulo, Brazil to meet the South American component of the promotion.

As the promotion only required me to fly from ( not to) Istanbul, I decided to book an Air Canada flight to London, England for August 16, where I would spend the night, before taking a Turkish Airlines flight first to Istanbul, then to Sydney, via Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As I have visited Australia a few times, I wasn’t inclined to spend much time there, so I booked an inexpensive Scoot flight from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur, where I planned to visit a new country (Brunei) before touring and relaxing in Kuala Lumpur for a few few days.

Obtaining an ETA for both the UK and Australia was simple, but Brazil proved to be challenging as its E-visa software is atrocious. Not even my son, the computer expert, could figure it out and only a phone call to the helpline enabled me to finally submit an application, which was approved within hours.

So, armed with my Brazilian visa, my UK ETA, my Australian authorization, lots of downloaded videos and a good attitude about extended flights in economy, I prepared for my journey. What could go wrong?

Well, Air Canada’s flight attendants announced they were going on strike on August 16. By August 14, Air Canada cancelled all of its flights, including the one I had planned to take to London. Fortunately, I had read about the potential of a strike earlier and had purchased a fully refundable ticket on Air Transat for August 16, just in case.

So, it was to be Air Transat. I have a credit card which gives me free lounge visits, so I decided to use one at the Premium Plaza lounge in terminal 3 at Pearson Airport. The lounge was full of ruckus kids and noisy adults and had the nerve to charge $10 for a glass of wine and $5.00 for a bottle of water. I was already missing Air Canada‘s Maple leaf lounge. However, the seven hour flight to London was uneventful.

I arrived at Gatwick airport about 11 AM, breezed through the E-gates, which facilitate immigration, then walked through a parkade to get to my hotel. The clerk was nice enough to allow me an early check-in at 1 PM, which I took advantage of.

I awoke the next morning at 1 AM, which was not a bad thing as my flight to Istanbul left at 5 AM. Gatwick airport is very easy to navigate at 3 AM and I was through immigration, check-in and security in a matter of minutes. The 737 max flight to Istanbul was full and boring.

I used another of my credit cards lounge passes to go into a lounge in Istanbul, where I ate, drank free wine, had a shower and prepared myself for the next two flights. An A350 plane, again completely full, took 10 hours to touchdown in Kuala Lumpur. There, all passengers were required to disembark, walk 20 feet to a security check-in at a gate leading right back to the same plane. Fortunately, for the eight hour flight to Sydney, I had an empty middle seat beside me and was able to doze for a few hours.

I arrived in Sydney to rain and a temperature of only 11°. Luckily, my hotel’s transfer bus was easy to find and within minutes, I was at the Travelodge hotel at Sydney, where I had a good night’s sleep.

The next day, I return to the airport and boarded Scoot Airline for Kuala Lumpur, via Singapore. Scoot is a low budget subsidiary of Singapore Airlines, and is notorious for not permitting any outside food on board. Water must be purchased, as must Wi-Fi and charging for your devices. A Scooty, as they call their flight attendants, berated the passenger sitting beside me who was eating a meal purchased at a fast food restaurant. She was sternly told to put it away.

In Kuala Lumpur, I spent the night before taking another budget airline, Air Asia, to Brunei for a few days. As I am counting countries, I was anxious to visit one I hadn’t been to before, and Brunei was a quick two hour flight from Kuala Lumpur. I then returned to Kuala Lumpur and relaxed and did tourist things there for three days.

The longest of my journeys was from Kuala Lumpur to São Paulo, Brazil. Originally, when I book the flight, it was to be done on a Boeing 787, with the Istanbul to São Paulo portion requiring a stop in Cuba for refueling. When the plane switched to an A350s, the refuelling stop was eliminated.

The flight was scheduled to leave Kuala Lumpur at 11:45 PM, but shortly after I arrived at the airport, I receive notice that the flight had been delayed until 3:30 AM. This was going to cut my five hour layover in Istanbul short, but still manageable. It was another full flight that eventually departed at 4:30 AM, but I was so exhausted I did sleep for a good portion of it.

Despite requesting fast track at Istanbul because of the short connection time, the personnel there kept telling me I had plenty of time, even with an idiotic security screening for international transit passengers, which took 30 minutes to get through. I had to race to my gate, just making the last call, with the desk agent telling me “ hurry hurry” because I was the last passenger.

A wonderful sight awaited me as I made my way to my assigned seat 34A-an empty row! For the next 13 hours, I was able to stretch out, throw my stuff all around and enjoy the solitude of 3 seats

I spent a few days in São Paulo before embarking on my direct flight to Toronto. The Air Canada strike only lasted a few days and my scheduled flight took off on time and landed 4 minutes early.

And now to prepare for Part 2…..