Benchmarking Turkey’s Four Leisure Airlines: What Keeps Their Flyers Coming Back?

The Loyalty Shift: Season 2, Edition 4

The Caravelo Loyalty Scorecard measures the strength of an airline’s relationship with its customers. We score each brand against the three pillars of the Relational Anchor (Access, Control, and Convenience) across fifteen sub-dimensions on a 0-5 scale. We combine those into a single Anchor Score. If you missed the methodology piece, you can find it here.

Today we turn the same tool to Turkey, which in 2025 posted the strongest airline-capacity growth of any market in Europe. A market expanding this fast is one where a repeat traveller is worth winning early, before a rival locks them in. So we took the four carriers competing hardest for that leisure flyer: Pegasus, AJet, SunExpress, and Corendon. They chase broadly the same traveller, yet each has answered the loyalty question differently. 

One built a full program, one rebuilt one, one leans on its parent’s, and one barely has a program at all. In this market, the strongest relationships rarely sit where the loyalty program does.

The four programs we assessed

We assessed the program each carrier runs today, not the ones it has announced or shut down.

• Pegasus runs BolBol, a full frequent-flyer program with points, membership levels, co-branded credit cards, partner earning, and an in-app game.
• SunExpress runs Reward World, a points program it rebuilt in 2024 around three tiers based on flights flown.
• Corendon offers a members’ discount code, with no points and no tiers, inside a larger travel group that owns hotels, resorts, and a tour operator.
• AJet has no program of its own. Travellers earn Turkish Airlines’ Miles&Smiles miles on AJet flights but cannot spend them or use their status with AJet.

Two of the four run no real program. But they still earn a real score since the scorecard measures how strongly a brand holds onto its customers, and that pull does not only live in a points balance.

The Turkish Leisure Scorecard: Four Carriers, Four Instincts

Before we go carrier by carrier, here is how all four look side by side. We plot each carrier’s three pillar scores as a triangle, so a strong, balanced program fills the shape and a weak or lopsided one leaves it thin on one side.

The four triangles fall into two pairs.

• Pegasus draws the fullest shape of the group, tilted toward Convenience and built on the only complete program here, though it still falls short on Access.
• SunExpress traces a similar shape a step lower, held back mainly by a weak digital experience.
• Corendon is nearly flat across the program pillars, and rises only on the travel group that surrounds the airline.
• AJet sits closest to the floor on Access, holding almost nothing it has not borrowed from Turkish Airlines.

Not one of the four forms a balanced triangle. The strongest pull on travellers comes from outside the traditional loyalty program: a good app, an owned hotel brand, a parent’s miles. That is the story of Turkish leisure engagement in 2026.

Let’s go through each one.

Pegasus’s BolBol: The Only Complete Program in the Market

Of the four, only Pegasus has built something a loyalty specialist would recognise as a full program. BolBol, a relaunch of the airline’s earlier Pegasus Plus scheme, pulls together points, tiers, co-branded cards, and a layer of engagement the others do not attempt. CEO Güliz Öztürk frames it less as a card scheme than a behaviour engine: “We don’t have a plastic card. From the first day, 15 years ago, it worked just with telephone numbers. If our customer is a mobile member, then they use our app, our digital channels, and they buy more and they fly more.”

On Access, BolBol does more than its peers, but still stops short of real exclusivity. Its three Access mechanics each reach a little further than the rest of the group, without any of them building a moat.

• While there are some discounted member fares, the underlying inventory stays public, holding Exclusive Inventory to 2 out of 5.
• The membership tiers grant faster check-in and boarding plus extra baggage, the group’s only structural priority benefit, earning 3 out of 5 on Priority and Early Access.
• Higher membership tiers come with faster check-in, earlier boarding, and extra baggage, the only real priority perk out of the four carriers (earning a 3 out of 5 on Priority and Early Access).
• A youth tier, a weekly in-app game, a referral mechanic, and a large consumer brand in Turkey earn 3 out of 5 on Identity and Community Signal, its strongest Access score, and the only one driven by getting travellers involved rather than handing them a perk.

On Control, the program is competent but not distinctive. Reward tickets priced at fixed point values tell members exactly what their points are worth, and the earn rates are published plainly (earning a 3 out of 5 on Pricing Clarity). Availability is the weak spot. Travellers report that Pegasus blocks point redemptions during peak periods, exactly when members most want to use them, which holds Real-Time Flexibility to 2 out of 5.

On Convenience, Pegasus leads the group. Its app is well rated and feature-rich, and it lets travellers book fast without a reservation code, earning 4 out of 5 on both Booking Simplicity and Digital User Experience, the strongest digital scores of the four. Hotels, car rental, and onboard streaming round out a credible cross-journey offer, a 3 out of 5 on Cross-Journey Integration.

The ceiling is Access. For all its breadth, BolBol gives travellers nothing they cannot find elsewhere; its pull comes from a good app and an engaging program, not from exclusive value. 

That leaves the fullest triangle in the group, leaning hard toward Convenience but never lifting on Access (Anchor 2.7). Pegasus is a Well-Built Commodity, the closest any Turkish carrier comes to a program worth defending, and one structural step short of standing apart.

SunExpress’s Reward World: A Rebuilt Program Behind a Weak Front Door

SunExpress, the Lufthansa and Turkish Airlines leisure joint venture, rebuilt its loyalty program in 2024, swapping a simple “fly ten, get one” model for a points scheme built on three tiers. It is a more thoughtful program than its profile suggests, let down by the booking experience wrapped around it.

On Access, the program is thin but not empty. There is no member-only inventory, and member fares match the public ones, holding Exclusive Inventory to 1 out of 5. Its real strength is a frequency mechanic: three earned tiers (Welcome, Silver, and Gold) reached over eighteen months of flying, each raising the points rate. There are also milestone rewards that grant a free seat after five flights and an extra-legroom seat after ten. Together these earn a 3 out of 5 on Volume and Frequency Enablement (the highest Access sub-score in the group).

On Control, SunExpress is the clearest of the four. Points carry a fixed value of one cent each, the earn rates are published, and members can pay with points and cash together on any flight, earning 3 out of 5 on Pricing Clarity. Change and cancellation terms are standard for the category, a clean 3 out of 5 on Flexibility and Cancellation.

On Convenience, the program is split between a solid back end and a weak front end.

• The member portal records preferences well, earning 3 out of 5 on Remembered Preferences.
• A Holiday Extras partnership extends the trip into hotels and transfers, reaching 3 out of 5 on Cross-Journey Integration.
• The booking flow itself draws steady complaints, with reviewers reporting session errors and failed bookings, holding both Booking Simplicity and Digital User Experience to 2 out of 5.

The program is sound but the way travellers reach it is not. A weak booking experience undercuts the loyalty the points scheme is built to earn.

The triangle echoes Pegasus’s shape but sits a step lower throughout, with no pillar that truly stands out (Anchor 2.3). SunExpress is a Well-Built Commodity whose rebuild is real, but not yet felt by the traveller.

Corendon: A Coupon for an Airline, an Ecosystem for a Brand

Corendon makes the edition’s central point better than anyone; a brand’s hold on its customers does not need to sit in its loyalty program at all. The airline’s own scheme is minimal, a members’ discount code worth ten percent off some fares, with no points and no tiers. What gives Corendon some weight is the travel group around it.

On Access, the airline program is among the weakest we assessed.

• The discount code is a coupon on public fares rather than exclusive inventory, holding Exclusive Inventory to 1 out of 5.
• There is no points currency or frequency mechanic to reward flying more, scoring 0 out of 5 on Volume and Frequency Enablement.
• Its one real asset is identity. Corendon runs a top-three Dutch tour operator and ten owned hotels and resorts, and travellers actively choose a Corendon holiday, earning 2 out of 5 on Identity and Community Signal.

That identity comes from owning the wider trip, not from the airline’s program, a distinction the score deliberately keeps. Several Corendon hotels are now franchised under Marriott and sit inside Marriott Bonvoy, so a Corendon holiday can earn a traveller points in one of the world’s largest loyalty programs while the airline itself offers only a coupon.

On Control, the airline is steady but limited. A new four-tier fare model, introduced in 2026, makes it clearer what each fare includes, earning 3 out of 5 on Pricing Clarity, but little beyond a discount makes costs predictable (a 1 out of 5 on Price Predictability).

On Convenience, the group’s strength finally shows. Because Corendon owns the hotels, the transfers, and the tour operator, it can package a whole trip more easily than any other carrier here, the highest Cross-Journey Integration score in the edition, a 4 out of 5. The airline’s own digital experience is decent, landing at 3 out of 5 on Digital User Experience.

The limit is structural. The relationship belongs to the holiday brand, not to the airline’s loyalty scheme, so the carrier captures little of it directly.

The triangle is flat across the program pillars and rises only on Cross-Journey, the most lopsided shape in the group (Anchor 1.9).

At the airline level Corendon is an Unanchored Program, its loyalty reduced to a coupon. The travel group around it genuinely keeps customers coming back, yet none of that pull belongs to the airline itself.

AJet: Loyalty Borrowed From a Parent, and Not Yet Returned

AJet is the most revealing case in the edition, because it shows what is left when an airline builds no loyalty of its own: a relationship borrowed entirely from its parent, Turkish Airlines, and only half handed over.

That half-measure is recent and deliberate. When Turkish Airlines rebranded AnadoluJet as AJet in 2024, it pulled the airline out of Miles&Smiles entirely, with no earning, no status, and no lounge access. It restored earning in June 2025, but only part of it. The inheritance now stands at three things: earning works, so travellers collect Miles&Smiles miles and status miles on AJet flights; redemption does not, so those miles cannot buy an AJet ticket; and status does not travel, so Miles&Smiles status buys no priority, boarding, or fast-track on board.

On Access, the hit is severe. With no exclusive inventory, no priority, and no guarantee of any kind, AJet scores 0 out of 5 on three of the five Access sub-dimensions. Miles earned toward Turkish Airlines status are its only thread of frequency value, worth 1 out of 5 on Volume and Frequency Enablement. And the airline carries no identity of its own, borrowing what little it has from its parent, which reaches just 1 out of 5 on Identity and Community Signal.

On Control, AJet sits at the category baseline. Fares follow the usual low-cost add-on model. The parent’s TKPAY wallet turns miles into spendable value and works on AJet flights, which adds a little predictability (a 2 out of 5 on Price Predictability).

On Convenience, the picture is mixed.

• The app rates highly in the stores, but travellers report failed check-ins and bookings they cannot retrieve, holding Booking Simplicity to 2 out of 5 and Digital User Experience to 3 out of 5.
• Through Turkish Airlines Holidays, travellers reach a full flight-and-hotel ecosystem, again owned by the parent, a 3 out of 5 on Cross-Journey Integration.

The constraint is plain. AJet’s loyalty is borrowed, and the loan is only half made. A full two-way Miles&Smiles integration is expected in late 2026, which would let travellers spend miles on AJet and start to close the Access gap, but it is not live yet, so we have not scored it.

The triangle sits almost on the floor for Access and only a little above it elsewhere (Anchor 1.6). 

AJet is an Unanchored Program in the most literal sense, because Turkish Airlines holds its relationship with the traveller. It has the widest gap to close in the group, and once the integration lands, the clearest path to closing it.

What the Turkish Diagnostic Tells Us

The shared pattern across all four carriers is consistent. 

Convenience is broadly handled. 

Control is modest and flat, with no carrier offering real price-lock or punitive-free flexibility. 

But Access, the only pillar that creates genuine relational gravity and the only one AI cannot replicate, is nearly absent. 

Not one carrier offers exclusive value a rival cannot match, which makes its absence the finding that matters most. The contrast with the wider category is sharp. In the European low-cost edition, Wizz Air reached an Anchor of 2.9 because it built real Access through paid memberships. No Turkish carrier has tried the same.

Next, the scorecard crosses the Atlantic to the three largest carriers in the United States: American, Delta, and United.

The question changes there. These airlines are not deciding whether to build loyalty. They built the most valuable programs in the world decades ago. The question is whether all that scale and history produced a real relationship, or just the most sophisticated commodity yet.