For our Million Mile Madness Challenge, Greg, Stephen, and I have all competed to complete the SAS EuroBonus Millionaire promo with the most style, affordability, and speed… all in a maximum of two weeks! Tomorrow night – that’s Tuesday, November 26, 2025 at 8:30pm Eastern time, we will be live on Youtube for the final points tally. Join us live to see Tim and Carrie award the final points and see who is ultimately crowned the winner of Million Mile Madness!
As always, the best way to make sure you don’t miss these live episodes is to subscribe to our YouTube channel here and click the bell icon next to the “subscribe” button to enable notifications from our channel.
If you missed the first few livestreams, you can watch them below!
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
I wasn’t able to attend the stream last night, and don’t have time to watch this morning. Who won?
The takeaway from this competition in terms of the scoring system should be that if a competitor “deliberately” throws one of the main criteria out the window as Greg put it, then that competitor should not receive any points in that particular category. In addition, points for criteria that are subjective should have less weight than measurables that are objective.
Two competitors each threw one of the 3 main criteria out the window, only one did not (Stephen) but somehow couldn’t manage to bring home the win because there was a flaw in the scoring system.
Sorry Stephen, you got hosed.
As I said in the live stream a little while ago, I think it’s a mischaracterization to say that I threw speed out the window. I flew a total of 19 Airlines and traveled 33,000+ mi over 13 days, averaging roughly a transcontinental US flight every day for 13 straight days. It certainly didn’t feel like it was slow-paced!
Yes, Greg and Steven both handily beat me on speed, but that says more about how quickly they completed it than how slowly I did! Yet I would argue that their speed advantage was largely a function of recklessness! I intentionally avoided some of the ~1.5hr international separate ticket connections that they chanced. Does that mean I threw speed out the window? I’m glad everyone made their flights, but Greg and Stephen’s incredibly tight connections in some cases could have ended up being very expensive to fix given the nonrefundable nature of their subsequent tight connections. My speed might not have looked so slow in comparison if either of them had missed a single flight given that missing one flight likely would have meant missing several for either of them and a complete reorganization of their trip. But, of course, they didn’t have any misses, and that made for tough competition!
Greg made the point during the live stream that there was some element of luck in everything working out and that it’s often the case that winners often do take some calculated risks. Hats off to him as he made it all work and had a magnificent finish deserving of a win.
I’ll say that Greg’s speed caught me off guard – when he said he was not going to compete on affordability, I imagined him focusing on luxury stays and a slower, more enjoyable trip. So I didn’t think I had to worry about him hurrying. I was wrong!
None of that is to argue with your core point that Stephen did have all three going for him, just adding some context for my decisions!
Nick,
Queen Gertrude said, “The lady doth protest too much,methinks”.
My post was intended to focus on the scoring system but here we go again:)
Question: “Does that mean I threw speed out the window?” Answer: Yes. There was a deliberate and conscious effort on your part to forgo speed in order to score style points. To say otherwise seems disegenuous. Of course your competitors took calculated risks to finish first BECAUSE THEY WERE TRYING to win the speed category and based on the grief you caught upon returning home it would appear your better half agrees.
The only difference between you and Greg concerning the lack of effort in a specific category is the fact that Greg readily admits throwing affordability out the window while you continue to deny it. I’ll give you one thing: I love the never admit when you’re wrong and never say die mentality. Keep digging champ! LOL
I voted for NIck. If I had the choice of any of three experiences, I’d take Nick’s any day. Remember, Greg won significant parts of his style score merely by cashing in existing miles for premium travel on non SkyTeam airlines. If the point was to fly 15 SkyTeam carriers, my own view would be that travel outside that framework could help with speed, but shouldn’t be a style factor. Oh well, the whole thing was for fun and publicity, and in the end it doesn’t really matter who “won.”
I vote Greg, but… the real winner for the past few years has always been the 240x AA miles from 2021. https://frequentmiler.com/5x-on-simplymiles-offers-awesome-deals/