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Turkish Airlines’ Miles&Smiles loyalty programme is running an interesting competition to celebrate the airline’s 90th birthday. Basically, they are asking travellers to suggest ways to make flying with Turkish better – and the people who make the best suggestions can win up to 300,000 Miles&Smiles miles.

“TURKISH AIRLINES IS LOOKING FOR A BRAND NEW PROJECT TO LAUNCH ON ITS 90TH ANNIVERSARY!

Turkish Airlines, connecting the most countries in the world, is organizing a special idea contest for the 90th anniversary of its
establishment.

By participating in the 90th Anniversary Idea Contest, you can submit your innovative ideas that enhance flight experience and earn 300,000 Miles!”

What are the details?

This sounds like a fun idea (and potentially a very useful one for the airline!), but you’re probably wondering what your chances of actually winning something are. I’ve taken a look at the terms and conditions, and I think there’s a reasonable chance InsideFlyer readers might be in the mix for a prize – if you play smartly…

There are 90 prizes in total and the competition is split into 5 different categories:

1. Flight Experience (Catering, Inflight products, Inflight entertainment system, Comfort, Additional services)
2. Airport Experience (Transportation, Ticketing, Check-in, Baggage, Lounges, Boarding, Information)
3. Sales, Communications & Winning Experiences (Website, Sales offices, Mobile application, Call center, Agencies, Social media, Advertisements, Miles&Smiles, Corporate Club, JetGenç, Shop&Miles)
4. Organizational Development & Innovation (Business processes, Organization, Efficiency and profitability, Education and employment, Innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem, New business model opportunities, Cooperation opportunities, Digitalization)
5. Sustainability & Social Responsibility (Waste management, Environmentally friendly products, Carbon emissions, Social responsibility)

There will be 18 winning submissions for each category, with the prize distribution as follows – for each category:

• 1st prize: 300,000 Miles
• 2nd prize: 250,000 Miles
• 3rd prize: 200,000 Miles
• 4th prize: 150,000 Miles
•  5th prize: 120,000 Miles
• 6th-18th prize: 60,000 Miles

All ideas will be evaluated by a jury consisting of Turkish Airlines’ teams of experts in the competition categories. So, to be clear, winners are not selected by random chance – they are chosen and ranked by a panel which decides which ideas are the best.

I’m sure InsideFlyer readers would have plenty of excellent suggestions about improving the flight and airport experience, but I also imagine Turkish will receive a lot of submissions for those categories.

I’m confident they will receive far fewer submissions for the other categories (particularly 3 and 4), and would be surprised if at least some readers can’t suggest something that ends up being judged in the top 18 ideas for those categories…

Note that the competition ends on 31st March 2023. The terms indicate that you can submit multiple ideas across different categories.

Bottom line

If Turkish takes the suggestions they receive seriously, this could be a clever and low cost way of generating some great ideas for improvement. There are an awful lot of smart travellers out there who will be able to highlight weaknesses and offer solutions.

Even if Turkish doesn’t do much with the feedback, you might still find it fun to play ‘Airline CEO’ for a bit and potentially win a chunk of miles!