Please help me win Frequent Miler’s Million Mile Madness 2024! Help me craft the winning path to 1 million miles and you can also win a great prize (prizes to be determined, but Greg says they’re going to great).
Million Mile Madness, indeed. I’m very excited about the prospect of designing a round-the-world itinerary to fly 15 SkyTeam airlines and earn 1 million SAS (Scandinavian Airlines) EuroBonus miles. As soon as I saw this promotion, I couldn’t wait to dig in and start trying to figure out the cheapest / fastest / best way to earn a million miles (and maybe see a new country or two along the way!).
Our new Million Mile Madness Challenge is going to come together fast — read full details of this challenge in the launch post: Start your (search) engines: You’re invited to Frequent Miler’s Million Mile Madness challenge. In short, Greg, Stephen, and I are competing to see who can (with reader help!) create the itinerary that has the most SAS — that’s Speed, Affordability, and Style. In this post, I am soliciting your help so that I can craft the winning Frequent Miler itinerary for this challenge — and you can be rewarded for your efforts. Each of us will select the reader who has been most helpful in creating our plans and that reader will win a prize — and a chance to win the grand prize. Again, more detail can be found in the launch post linked above and go to our full Million Mile Madness page for full challenge updates, including links to Greg and Stephen’s journal posts.
Constraints
- Home airport: New York City (EWR/JFK/LGA) or Boston (BOS) or Washington-Dulles (IAD). I a roughly similar distance to the New York City or Boston airports and positioning to Washington-Dulles is really easy for me. I could, of course, position anywhere else in the US with my miles as need be.
- Departure Date Constraints:
- Best: November 10th or later
- Earliest: November 4th
- Notes: I have tickets to a local theater production on November 9th. I could (and recognize that I may have to) miss this. If I can’t pull off the trip leaving November 10th or later, then I can leave as early as the 4th.
- Return Date: I must be home no later than November 23, but I’d like to not be gone for more than 2 weeks (and my preference is to push as close to 10 days as possible, though I recognize that logistics may dictate a few additional days).
- Restrictions: Relatively few. I don’t mind long days and I function well enough off of limited sleep. Bring it on. I’d rather avoid Greg’s 12-minute layovers if possible, but otherwise I’m fairly open.
Potentially Useful
- I do have a 10-year multi-entry visa for China. Those visas had been suspended during the pandemic, but were re-activated last year and I still have a couple years left on one I got a couple of years before the pandemic. I figured that this point might be relevant to know since we’ll have to fly both China Eastern and Xiamen Airlines and since there are some cheap flights into airports in China that may not offer transit visas.
- I don’t mind getting other visas as necessary, but keep the timeline in mind. We’re looking at closing submissions about a week or week and a half before travel commences. That might make turnaround time difficult on visas for some countries.
- Airline fee credits: I have a brand new Business Platinum and a few other Platinum cards with a total of $900 in airline incidental credits as well as a Hilton Aspire $50 credit to use. The Business Platinum credits would be easy enough to use for a flight booked through Delta. The $50 Aspire card credit should theoretically work when booking airfare directly with any airline or via Amex Travel.
- Amex Offers? We’ve recently seen offers for Virgin Atlantic and Air France. I’m not sure that either would be triggered by a complicated multi-carrier booking, but if I see one of these offers pop up, I might have to play with the search engine to see what I can do.
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:
- 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)
My general thoughts so far . . .
I’ve got an idea in mind that I like, but I’m very much open to trashing this if a better plan materializes…
What I’d really like to do is combine Affordability and Style. Does that sound like an impossible combination? Here’s how: I’d like to try to find the 10 or 15 dirt-cheapest flights that meet the terms of the challenge (i.e. the cheapest flights that earn miles with SAS). I do not at all expect those flights to line up together — in fact, I expect that the cheapest flights, in at least some cases, will be very short. That’s great, because what I want to do is to try to piece together an ANA round-the-world itinerary that gets me to the places I need to go to pick up the cheap SkyTeam flights.
In other words, imagine that I fly United from San Francisco to Seoul and then hit some SkyTeam flights: Maybe I fly a sub-$100 fare to Beijing on Korean Airlines, then maybe a cheap China Eastern Airlines flight to Vietnam and a cheap domestic flight on Vietnam Airlines (all SkyTeam carriers) before I resume my ANA round-the-world with a Thai Airways business class award to Bangkok and on to Dubai where I can pick up Saudia to fly to . . . etc.
I’m just making that up, but I imagine it could be possible to put together a reasonable-enough round the world ticket that fills in the gaps to get to a bunch of cheap SkyTeam flights. This is a starting point for planning the trip, but not a must — if flying long-haul economy is the best way to connect the dots effectively, I’ll make do with Priority Pass and Plaza Premium lounges and cool excursions to get my “Style” points.
I also really love the idea of including interesting Fifth Freedom flights (which are flights that connect two airports outside of an airline’s home country). Australian Frequent Flyer has a list of Fifth Freedom routes that claims to be kept up-to-date (I haven’t thoroughly checked). I also subscribe to the full version of Flight Connections, which can help to make those easily identifiable.
If you’re interested in doing some searching, don’t forget that Google Flights can be a powerful tool in doing things like searching flights to an entire country or even continent. For example, see this screen shot from a search from Seoul, Korea to Asia, filtered to SkyTeam carriers and a cost of no more than $100:
Help! (and maybe win!)
I need your help! I don’t expect that one person will build the entire “perfect” itinerary, but I’ll take all the help I can get. Whether you construct the perfect way to hit all the European carriers in a single day or you tip me off to the cheapest route from Europe to Asia, I’ll take all the help I can get! Don’t feel like one person has to do it all.
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 “Nick: Million Mile Madness suggestions” (I suggest front-loading the name because I want to make sure I see that it’s for me even when looking at my email on a phone, where a long subject line is likely to get cut off).
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).
Let’s go!
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In terms of cool excursions for affordability and style, you could do free airport transit tours organized by the Korean and Taiwanese governments. Depending on the day of the week, you could do a tour of the DMZ, Blue House (Korean White House) and other cool places from 9AM-2PM on a layover before returning to the ICN for a shower and meal in the Priority Pass Lounge.
To make an ICN tour, VN408 from Ho Chi Minh arrives at around 6:30AM while GA878 from Jakarta arrives at 7:55AM on Sundays. A couple other red-eye flights from Vietnam and Indonesia on Korean Air would also work out time-wise. After the tour, you could connect on to a 4:20PM flight to Shanghai on China Eastern, 4:25PM flight to Atlanta on Delta or a later flight on Korean Air, Vietnam or Garuda Indonesia.
TPE is more flexible because the 3 tours leave at different times but even if you miss the tours, it’s easy to get out into the city in under an hour via cheap public transit. If your layover is shorter, you could do an excursion out to Xpark aquarium by yourself.
VS has fifth freedom flights from Barbados (BGI) to Grenada or St. Vincent. You can then take Delta’s inaugural flight from BGI to ATL on November 23 for style points although you wouldn’t arrive at EWR until just after midnight. The water salute would probably happen when the flight from ATL to BGI lands so you’d have to arrive at the airport early to see it.
Not sure if you want to earn status but if you do some long hauls or pay for more expensive fare classes, it shouldn’t be hard to earn Silver status at 20K points (Skyteam Elite) or even Gold at 45K points (Elite+). You just have to watch out for the cheapest economy fares crediting as low as 10% of miles flown.
Google Flights might be your friend elsewhere, but it doesn’t display the cheapest price in China (nor do the airlines official English language web sites). To look up cheap fares in China, you need to search on trip.com.
For example, one way MF8502 SHA – XMN economy fare on 11/07 is $349 on Google Flights; it is $151 on trip.com. Of course you still need to check if the fare class is eligible for SAS credit, but you get the idea.
The other obvious thing to be careful of is the codeshare flights. MU owns FM (Shanghai Airlines), which has MU flight number attached. FM is SkyTeam associate member but not full member so their flights don’t count; Xiamen is owned by China Southern, although China Southern quit SkyTeam years ago, MF is still in. But China Southern flights can have MF flight numbers. Trip.com will correctly display the operating airline.
As it looks likely Nick may need to stay in Shanghai, I will just talk about FHR hotels there. I recommend two: Shanghai-La Pudong or The Langham Xiantiandi. If staying at the former, ask for room in the riverside wing (the Pujiang Wing), the upgrade will get you a bund-view room; the later is smack in the city center and steps from major shops and malls, as well as subway station.
If you want Hyatt, next door to the Langham is an Andaz; if you want to do Brand Explorer, there is a new Caption to check off that box. Stay away from UrCove, Hyatt shutdown warning!
Last but not least, download the AliPay app and/or WeChat app to link your credit card for payments in China, outside major hotels and luxury shops, your credit card won’t get you far. AliPay is a much smoother experience IMHO, and Chase/BoA is not overzealous to lock your card when seeing transactions on either platform (Citi is). Once you have that set up, you can order DiDi ride (Uber equivalent) from inside the app, as well as paying for any goods and services you can imagine.
Not sure if this is helpful, but you could also transfer Citi –> SAS points which may give some other options. Especially on airlines that may be a potential problem to credit SAS or need very specific fare classes.
https://frequentmiler.com/from-citi-to-sas-eurobonus-the-long-way-are-there-sweet-spots/
Also could you theoretically use the amex 20K AF offer with 1K spend and save some $$ that way as well.
There’s no more path from Citi to SAS – that relied on transferring from Choice to Radisson Americas, but Radisson Americas ceased to exist more than a year ago.
Has anyone played with the idea of trying to hit every continent in planning the itinerary? It seems like the the LAX-PPT Air France route could be combined with the China Eastern 5th Freedom Auckland-Sydney, then take Garuda from Sydney into the heart of Asia for the rest. Saudia and Kenya Airways can take you between Europe, then use UX as the bridge between Madrid to South America. There’s a KLM 5th freedom between EZE and SCL. From there, you could use AM to get back to the US. I just love the idea of hitting 6 continents for the challenge, but I have no idea how the timing would work. I would have to imagine some of those 5th freedom routes could come cheap, but probably not the LAX-PPT route. It seems to be much cheaper as an ending strategy going the direction of PPT-LAX. It actually might be a nice ending route for Stephen.
OK, I think I’ve got it. Trip came out to 0.004 cents per point when you get the million, a pretty good deal. But I could never do 15 flights in Econ…..maybe you can upgrade it a bunch.
BOH-LHR – Virgin
LHR-CPH – SAS
CPH-CDG – AF
CDG-AMS – KLM
AMS-OTP – TARMO
**Reposition** OTP-DBX
DBX-NBO – KENYEA
NBO-JED – SAUDI
JED-CGK – GARUDA
CGK-SGN – VN
SGN-XMN – XM
XMN-ICN – KE
ICN-PVG – CHINA EAST
PVG-TPE – CHINA AIR
TPE-MEX – AREOMEX
MEX-BOS – DL
Nick I enjoy that you always push the limits on these challenges, this makes them very entertaining to follow and believe it has helped you win a few. If you are committed to style and using an ANA RTW award to help with long haul flights an interesting route could include the 5th freedom flights to AKL. China airlines flies from BNE and China eastern flies from SYD. Star alliance could be used to arrive or depart in style and the other direction you could use Garuda to connect to South east asia. There are a few days where the timing of these 2 routes work out well to keep with the speed portion of the challenge and with an overnight flight to Australia you may not even lose too much time.
Nick … pulling for you this time. You got the short end of the stick last time with Morocco!
While it’s not route specific, you’ll want to plan a full 24 hours of no flights in at least Asia and Europe for when something goes wrong (and it will on some of these airlines…) to allow for last minute changes to save the trip.
I’m not totally sure how helpful this would be given that paid flights would need to be credited to SAS, but I have ITA Executive status currently thanks to a status match earlier this year. One of the benefits, as I understand it, is that I can gift ITA Premium status (SkyTeam elite) to someone – would be happy to do so. SkyTeam elite status is of limited value, but priority check-in (and security in some cases, I think?) might be useful if you could then swap the FF# for SAS before departure.
Imo the stakes are too high to play games with switching FF numbers around. One fumbled ticket and you’re out 900,000 miles
I tend to agree, but figured it couldn’t hurt to offer
Thank you NICK.
Having the ANA RTW trip in mind – there are not a lot of short/cheap trips with KQ that connect to Star Alliance, but one of these is ZNZ – NBO or vice versa. Turkish is flying IST-ZNZ, while LH offers NBO-FRA and Ethiopian NBO – ADD (and beyond). Another option is NBO – MBA domestic (very cheap), but just ET connecting MBA to Star Alliance.
Hope that helps a tiny bit!
Good to know about ZNZ-NBO — I wouldn’t mind getting to Zanizbar!!
LH is to be avoided with ANA though because of the surcharges……
But I like where we’re going!
So I already spilled my itinerary on Greg’s post but since we are both starting from the east coast around the same time I think a compressed version of my itinerary might work well for you.
Day 1: JFK-LHR (super cheap one way in Y)
Day 2: LHR-AMS-MAD, MAD-BCN, BCN-CPH
Day 3: CPH-CDG-OTP
If you don’t mind backtracking – which will be necessary if you want to fly Skyteam ex-OTP – you can put OTP in the middle somewhere, it’s not hard to get them on a single ticket with an AF/KL flight.
TUN-JED-CGK/BKK is pretty cheap (around $750) in business class, good candidate for a MR redemption.
Then I’m doing CGK-KUL-SGN-BKK-CAN-FOC-ICN-TAO-PVG-TPE and flying home on a BR award.
XMN-TPE is $229 in business class on Xiamen, it’s hard to get qualifying fare classes on them. And they don’t show up on Amex travel.
HKG works well as a hub for cheaper flights, I just decided I didn’t want to backtrack that much
Fantastic tip on XMN-TPE being $229 in business! Thank you for all this.
Nick, that is something I have been thinking of — fly the intercontinental on miles in business, and fly the paid SkyTeam segments on short, cheap flights. It may not need to be ANA round the world, you can play some Aeroplan tricks too. Or, if you like, you can finish your AS mile run as part of this!
If we follow this line of thoughts, looks like the one airline to be left out is VS. I don’t think they have short and cheap flights
Yeah unless you pop down to Bermuda for a fifth freedom flight I think their shortest haul stuff is London to the Middle East. JFK-LHR is dirt cheap in economy this time of year though, and you can take the daytime flight to make it somewhat less miserable
Tonei said exactly what I was going to say — they have some short cheapish flights in the Caribbean….but also that JFK<->LHR is cheap in economy at this time of year. Beat me to it!
Have you checked the dates on those short Caribbean flights? Some of them only run seasonally
They are running through the end of December at least. $160-$175 one way though, probably not a winning proposition
*barbados not bermuda