Mission Accomplished! (Greg’s Million Mile Madness trip journal)

Planning Journal

Wednesday October 30th

I’m making progress! I’ve booked half the trip, and I think I have an awesome plan so far. As Nick eloquently explained in his journal, this challenge is crazy hard. Previously I was trying to cram in a combination of Speed, Affordability, and Style, but that made things nearly impossible. Every time I thought I found just the right combination of cheap flights, quickness, and pizazz, I realized a new problem: I forgot to include one of the necessary airlines; or the flight or activity I wanted wasn’t available that day; or prices were insanely high just on the exact day I needed them. Fortunately, the log-jam broke after I decided to focus more on Style. By allowing myself to pick $200 flights instead of $100 flights, my options suddenly greatly expanded. I had one particular exciting flight I wanted to book, and by focusing less on affordability, I was able to book things so that I’d make that flight in time. In fact, freedom from the strictest self-imposed price limits make it possible for me to go fast. Really fast. I’ve spent a lot of time in Europe before, so I’m not planning to spend much time sightseeing. For this challenge, if all goes well, I’m going to rip through Europe lightning fast.

My new goal is to take first place in both Style and Speed. Nick is confident that he’ll out-speed me. Maybe. I haven’t put together the Asian part of my itinerary yet. But I’ll eat Nick’s fedora if I don’t finish the European carriers faster than he does. With respect to affordability, I’m sure I’ll take last place, but don’t get me wrong: I’m still working to do this frugally… just not as frugally as I’m sure Stephen and Nick are doing.

Pondering Style points… While I’m actually pretty confident about my speediness, my ability to win on Style is going to depend a lot on how the judges, Tim and Carrie, score things. I have a number of style elements planned so far and will surely add a few more to the mix before my planning is done. But how will Tim and Carrie score them? One of the planned elements, to me, is a major, major wow. But maybe Tim and Carrie will see it and shrug. I don’t know. The good news is that I know that I’m going to enjoy it! Sorry I can’t reveal that now. We’re going to unveil everything as we go along during our actual travels.

Friday October 18th

My general thoughts so far…

• Use my 2 Delta Global Upgrade Certificates for long flights: To keep my total cash outlay as low as possible, I’ll probably exclusively book economy flights, but it would be great if I can use my upgrade certificates to fly the longest flights up front!
• Remember that miles can be used to fill in the gaps: I don’t need all of the qualifying flights to link up with one another. I mean, it would be elegant if they did all connect, but the rules of our challenge do allow me to use my own miles to book connecting flights. This way I can concentrate first on finding the cheapest possible qualifying flights and then separately figure out how to get from one to another.
• Look for cheap tickets that include multiple qualifying airlines for one low price. Often it is just as cheap or cheaper to fly a multi-leg route vs. a non-stop. In those cases, it is sometimes possible to fly multiple partner airlines on a single ticket for each direction of travel.

The beginnings of a plan

I’m not at all wedded to this, but I found that there are dirt cheap round-trip flights from New York to London in November where I could do the outbound on Delta and the return on Virgin Atlantic (or vice versa). That could get me two of the airlines at once and get me across the pond to Europe. If I do that, I’m thinking that I’d skip flying AeroMexico. Instead, I’d hop around Europe a bit to knock off most of the remaining Europian airlines, then maybe fly Saudia to Asia (I found cheap flights to Jakarta, for example). From there I could fly around to knock off all of the Asian carriers plus Kenya Airlines if I can make their Bangkok-Guangzhou flight work for me. The problem with this plan, though, is I’d then have to fly all the way back to London in order to return home. Yuck.

As I ponder this more, a better path may be to go the other way and circle the globe. I could fly Aeromexico from Detroit to Mexico, then westward across the Pacific to hit the Asian countries and fly Kenya Airways, skip Saudia Airlines altogether, find a cheap way to Europe to cross the European countries off the list and then finally fly home from there (maybe with my business class award from Dublin if I’ve completed everything by then).

Sunday October 20th (The most helpful tips so far)

Here’s an outline of a solution I’m considering (there’s still plenty of room for enhancements or to sway me to completely different solutions):

• Detroit to NYC via Delta (May have to fly to DC to get very cheap fare and then maybe bus or train to NYC?)
• JFK to London via Virgin Atlantic $194 eco lite (Fare class T which qualifies for SAS earnings). This is really key to flying east around the world since it’s the cheapest Virgin Atlantic flight I can find anywhere plus it connects me to the European carriers plus I may be able to use a Delta upgrade to upgrade to Premium Economy (not sure yet about that one).
• Hop around Europe to knock off all of the European carriers
• Fly to Asia on Saudia (there are a few super cheap qualifying options)
• Hop around Asia to knock off Asian carriers and Kenya Airways
• Fly home Delta ICN-DTW-PHL $533 main cabin economy or $733 premium economy. By applying one of my Global Upgrade Certificates I should be able to fly home in Delta One Suites. This wouldn’t be a qualifying flight for the itinerary but it would get me home inexpensively and in style. I could, maybe, make it a qualifying flight by changing the flight to credit to SAS after I get the upgrade, but I don’t know if that will work. If I get evidence that that will work, I can book a cheaper flight to NYC at the start of the trip.

And, most importantly, I want to thank everyone who has offered up tips! Here are the tips I’ve found most helpful so far:

Monday October 28th

More Style, Less SA: Until last Thursday, I hadn’t had much time to spend on working on this challenge. I then spent most of Thursday searching routes, but ran out of time before booking anything. Then, on Friday, I was off to present at the Chicago Seminars and didn’t have time to work on it all weekend. But, I did give a presentation about Million Mile Madness. During the presentation I mentioned that I had been focusing more on Speed and Affordability than Style (reminder: we are competing to finish the SAS EuroBonus challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style). Well, the audience would have none of that. They were adamant that I should focus most on Style. After all, I was told, Nick was probably going to go for Speed, and Stephen would surely conquer Affordability. It was more on-brand for me to go for Style. And, you know what? I think they were right — especially since focusing on Style should make my trip much more pleasant. Alrighty then. Here I go… with “style”!

Rejiggering: Most of the work I did last Thursday is now out the window. I spent all day today (Monday) re-working my plans, but this time with a focus on style. Towards that end, I have a few key things I’m trying to work in to earn lots of style-points (sorry, I’m not going to detail them here lest my competitors steal my ideas). But… it’s really, really hard! Some of these things are only available on certain days, and I still have to string each of the different airlines into the schedule in-between these things. Every time I think I’m almost there, I hit a new wall. Argh!!!

Help me fly with style: Do you know of any particularly cheap business or premium economy fares that might help my cause? Or maybe you know about cool things in relevant cities (see the qualifying airline list, above) that would win style points. Or… anything else! Please comment below!

Constraints

• Home airport: Detroit (DTW). I could also take Amtrak to Chicago to fly from ORD; or I could use my own miles to fly pretty much anywhere to start flying qualifying flights.
• Departure Date Constraints:
  • Best: November 8th or later
  • Good: November 6th or 7th
  • Possible but not great: November 4th or 5th
• Return Date: I must be home no later than November 22
• US Passport: Ideally stopovers will be in countries where US passport holders don’t need a visa (or where the visa is cheap and easy to get). I don’t have an active Chinese visa, but I believe that I’ll be OK as long as I don’t plan to stay more than 24 hours (or 72 hours depending upon the airport).

Qualifying Airlines

Here are the 16 airlines available for the promotion. Since I need to fly 15 of them, I can only leave 1 off the list. And I have to book qualifying paid fares since I don’t have any SAS miles to redeem:

• Qualifying airlines based in North America
  • Aeromexico
  • Delta
• Qualifying airlines based in Europe (primary hubs shown in parentheses)
  • Air Europa (Madrid MAD)
  • Air France (Paris CDG)
  • KLM (Amsterdam AMS): KLM also has several 5th Freedom Flights entirely in Asia: KUL to Jakarta (CGK); SIN to Denpasar DPS; Taipei (TPE) to Manilla (MNL)
  • SAS (Copenhagen CPH, Stockholm ARN, Oslo OSL)
  • TAROM (Bucharest OTP)
  • Virgin Atlantic (London LHR, Manchester MAN)
• Qualifying airlines based in Asia (primary hubs shown in parentheses)
  • China Airlines (Taipei TPE)
  • China Eastern (Shanghai PVG)
  • Garuda Indonesia (Jakarta CGK)
  • Korean Air (Seoul ICN, GMP)
  • Vietnam Airlines (Ho Chi Min City SGN, Hanoi HAN)
  • Xiamen Airlines (Xiamen XMN, Fuzhou FOC)
• Qualifying airlines based elsewhere (primary hubs shown in parentheses)
  • Kenya Airways Nairobi (NBO): Note that Kenya Airways has a 5th freedom flight in Asia: Bangkok BKK to Guangzhou CAN
  • Saudia Airlines (Riyad RUH, Jeddah JED)

Potentially Useful Stuff

I don’t know if I’ll use any of the following for this trip, but here are some things that might come in handy:

• 2 Delta Global Upgrade Certificates (GUCs): I could use these to upgrade from cheap economy flights to Premium Economy or Business Class (depending upon the airline and whether or not the flight offers Premium Economy) on Delta or select SkyTeam partners: Air France, KLM, Virgin Atlantic, Korean Air or Aeromexico (full details can be found in the Terms & Conditions found here). I’m not sure exactly how this will work in practice since I’ll have to use the certificates from my Delta account, but I need to credit the earned miles on the flight to SAS. I *think* I can change it to SAS after I’m upgraded but before the flight. If anyone has experience with this, please let me know!
• 4 $200 Amex Platinum airline fee reimbursements: Through creative use of these credits, it wouldn’t be hard to use these to pay for flights as long as the flights are bookable through Delta.
• Dublin to Detroit Award flight: I have an award booked for Dublin to Detroit (via Toronto) flying Air Canada business class: This is the return leg of a round-trip ANA award that I booked in order to avoid losing the ANA miles altogether when they would have expired. I’ve already flown the outbound part of the award (when I braved a 12 minute layover) and I don’t have any plans to use this return flight so I’d consider it a nearly free way to return home at the end of the challenge if I complete the 15th SkyTeam segment in Europe. ANA allows free changes to the date and time, but I can’t change the carrier (Air Canada) or the route (DUB-YYZ-DTW). Using this would be dependent upon Air Canada releasing award space on the date I need.
• BLADE Helicopter flight: My Bilt Platinum status grants me one free BLADE helicopter ride each year. While this wouldn’t likely help directly with the challenge, it might give me some serious Style points if I were to helicopter to my hotel during the challenge

Help! (and maybe win!)

I need your help! Please don’t feel that you have to figure it all out. You might help, for example, by putting together a within-Asia itinerary. Or maybe you know tricks for booking Asian or European flights cheaper. Or maybe you know something I should avoid at all costs. Whatever little or big thing you can do to help, please do!

The best way to contribute is by posting to the comments below. That way others can see what you’ve written and build from there. If you really want to email me, though, you can write to the Frequent Miler Mailbag here and make sure the subject heading directs the email to me. For example you could write the subject as “Million Mile Madness suggestions for Greg”.

Whoever I deem to be most helpful overall will be one of three selected winners. And if I win the challenge, you’ll get the grand prize (details TBD).

Ready. Set. Go!

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