Nick’s SAS Dilemma: Guess I’m going to Mexico?

Greg reported earlier today receiving an exciting email from SAS Airlines noting that he is a EuroBonus Millionaire. Sadly, I have not been as fortunate. In fact, I’m still missing credit for three airlines — and I’ve only been getting error messages when trying to submit for credit online. Furthermore, when I phoned the SAS call center in Denmark yesterday, I was told that the system for claiming credit is completely down with no information available to share as to when it will be fixed, so the agent couldn’t even manually submit a claim. That’s really frustrating since I don’t know when I’ll know if I need to fly another airline to reach 15 — and I can’t see waiting until Christmas week to take action.

My missing airlines: Vietnam Airlines, Air Europa, and Virgin Atlantic

I have earned credit for 12 out of the 15 airlines that I flew during the challenge. The three that I’m missing each have a slightly different story.

I am far from the only person having issues getting credit here — there’s an entire Flyertalk thread dedicated to missing miles credit requests and another one dedicated to the SAS EuroBonus Millionaire promotion. I’ve filled out the online form for one of the airlines below and emailed customer service to claim retroactive credit on the other two (all noted in the summaries below).

Vietnam Airlines

I expect this one to be straightforward enough and the closest to a slam dunk of the three I have remaining. I have the physical paper boarding pass for this flight that shows my ticket number, name, and has my EuroBonus number printed on it as well as the fare basis. I don’t know why this one didn’t credit automatically.

When I first tried submitting for retroactive credit about 8 days after my flight, I got an error message saying “ticket information not matching”.

That didn’t make any sense to me (after all, I was indeed on my flight from Hanoi, Vietnam to Bangkok, Thailand!). I had a small moment of panic when I realized that my email confirmation almost looked like my last name and first / middle name got reversed (for the record, I did try claiming credit with the name in the other order also and got the same error). However, my boarding pass shows the typical Last Name/FirstNameMiddleName format.

A week or so ago, I began getting a different error message that just says “There’s been an error. Try again later” and says that no miles have been claimed. I assume this is because of the “system outage”.

Still, I’m relatively confident that this one will get credited so long as SAS fixes its system.

For the time being, emailed customer service to see if I can be manually credited, but reports at Flyertalk indicate that process is slow to respond and when they do, it sounds like the response is usually just that there is a backlog and they can’t process it right now. That said, I’m just hoping that sending an email creates a case on which I can follow up if and when the system comes back online and/or track within the app.

Air Europa

I was very careful to book an Air Europa flight that was not operated by Air Europa Express, which some people had been told is a separate subsidiary and not a qualifying airline. I was further careful to check the fare class of my flight using ITA Matrix and I booked via Expedia.com because the Air Europa site did not display fare class information, but Expedia did display the fare class. I booked via Expedia for the assurance that I was booking a qualifying fare class.

I assumed that this would be a simple manual claim that would be instantly credited like many of my other flights, but when I submitted the claim at the beginning of this month, it said that they required more information to follow up on the claim. The SAS form asked me to attach a copy of my receipt.

I attached a copy of my receipt from Expedia but also explained that I additionally had my digital boarding pass and a screen shot from the SAS app showing the flight and that my EuroBonus number was attached.

I was able to submit that information, but the form indicated that it could take them ~5 weeks to respond to the claim.

That takes us into 2025! That’s really inconvenient since, if for some reason they deny my claim, I can’t “make the flight up” if I don’t hear back from them until January 2025. To be clear, I don’t know why they would deny the claim — I fully expect that I should earn miles from this flight.

However, one thing is making me a little nervous: Stephen also booked a flight via Expedia (I can’t recall on which carrier). When he submitted his missing mileage claim, it came back that he was actually booked in a different fare class than what Expedia had shown. In his case, SAS said that his ticket was booked in a higher economy class fare class, so he earned more SAS miles than he expected on that flight. But the fact that Expedia was apparently displaying incorrect fare information certainly makes me nervous. In Stephen’s case, that worked out to be beneficial — but it now has me nervous that Expedia could have displayed an incorrect fare class here that could cost me a shot at 1,000,000 miles.

Again, I expect this flight to credit. I had added the reservation to my SAS app before travel and the SAS app automatically showed the fare class, which matched what Expedia displayed. I don’t have any good reason to be nervous apart from the fact that I don’t want to be waiting until January to see what happens.

Virgin Atlantic

This is the one where I’m just not sure what to expect. I played with fire here and readers were quick to point out that I might get burnt.

That’s because I booked my Virgin Atlantic flight via Delta. I did that in order to pay with my Amex Platinum card. This flight cost $194 whether booked through Delta or through Virgin Atlantic. By using a $50 Delta Gift Card and my Platinum card to pay the ~$144 remaining cost of my ticket, I knew that I’d probably get an automatic airline incidental credit from Amex since I had chosen Delta as my airline of choice for the credit. Sure enough, that worked and I got credited the $144.

And I thought that this flight would qualify because the same flight was available for the same $194 total price through Virgin Atlantic, booking into fare class T, which is a qualifying fare class. Booking via Delta showed fare class E. That E-class fare is also a qualifying fare class with Virgin Atlantic.

However, Delta’s E-class is Basic Economy and does not qualify for miles with SAS. I didn’t think this would be an issue because the terms of the promotion indicated that it was the operating carrier that would count for the purposes of getting credit for the airline flown. My flight was operated by Virgin Atlantic and showed an E-class fare on the Virgin Atlantic website, which would be a qualifying Virgin Atlantic fare class. However, readers pointed out that they thought that since it was a Delta-issued ticket and Delta tickets in E class do not qualify for mileage credit, I might not be able to earn miles in this case even though it was operated by Virgin Atlantic. The expectation among some readers was that the ticketing carrier would determine whether a ticket would qualify to earn miles, but you’d get credit for checking off the operating airline if your ticket allowed for mileage earning.

The truth is that I just don’t know for sure how this works for sure. If anyone flew a Delta-issued Virgin Atlantic-operated itinerary in E-class, I’d love to know whether you got credit!

When I initially submitted my claim for missing mileage credit, the error message I received on this one was interesting: it didn’t say that the ticket was ineligible for miles, but rather said that the claim couldn’t be processed because the flight was already credited to another program.

I was very careful not to log into my Delta account to buy the ticket and not to bring up the ticket while logged in to my Virgin Atlantic account. After I got that error, I checked both programs to make sure that I didn’t somehow accidentally get credit for the flight with them. I didn’t. And I have screen shots from pulling up the booking on Virgin Atlantic’s site (while not logged in) showing both the E fare class and my EuroBonus number attached.

However, somewhat maddeningly, there’s no obvious way to share that information with SAS. The online form just says that it has been credited to another program.

I explained this to the phone agent yesterday and he just repeated that I’m not the only one, the system is down, and there’s nothing they can do right now. I should just try back “in some days”.

For the time being, I’ve tried emailing customer service to see if I can be manually credited, but reports at Flyertalk indicate that process is slow to respond and when they do, it sounds like the response is usually just that there is a backlog and they can’t process it right now. That said, I’m just hoping that sending an email creates a case on which I can follow up if and when the system comes back online and/or track within the app.

I’m 50/50 as  to whether or not this flight is going to credit. And so….I think I’m going to Mexico.

I guess I’ve gotta go to Mexico

I’m reasonably confident that both Air Europa and Vietnam Airlines should credit. I don’t know whether or not Virgin Atlantic will. Just like Greg and Stephen, I had something of a contingency plan in place in case I ended up in a situation like this.

Out of the 17 possible airlines for this challenge, I flew 15. I didn’t fly Aerolineas Argentinas in large part because it wasn’t yet possible to attach a EuroBonus number to an Aerolineas Argentinas booking, nor was it expected to be possible to request retroactive credit until late December. It didn’t seem worth going all the way to Argentina with what felt like slim hope of being able to get credit.

The other airline I left out was Aeromexico. That was intentional since I figured it would be relatively cheap and easy to pick up an Aeromexico flight if one of my flights didn’t credit for some reason.

In an ideal world, I’d wait until SAS denied one of my missing miles claims before taking an unnecessary trip to Mexico. Unfortunately, their delay in processing claims and broken system make that incredibly difficult.

As of today, I have less than three weeks to make sure that I get credit for 15 airlines or I’m only going to earn 100,000 miles for flying 10 airlines — missing out on 900,000 additional miles. For the last 10 days of this month, I’ll be visiting family to celebrate Christmas and the New Year holiday. Apart from the fact that I don’t want to ruin holiday plans with the family to take mileage run flights to Mexico and/or Europe, that’s also one of the busiest travel periods of the year, with flight prices historically significantly higher than usual and weather delays prone to cause disruptions. I just can’t see waiting another week or 10 days for SAS to drag their feet on fixing their systems.

And so, stuck between a rock and a hard place, I think I’m going to take a trip to Mexico this weekend. I’ve booked two award tickets from my home airport to and from Mexico with an empty leg in the middle where I’m going to book a domestic AeroMexico flight in a qualifying fare class. That will be my 16th airline, but it provides a little insurance in case that Virgin Atlantic flight doesn’t credit. Luckily, award flights both ways are reasonable, and I was able to figure it out to do the whole thing over the weekend so that it (hopefully) won’t disrupt the weekday schedule at home. But it does ruin plans that I had this weekend. And it might be totally unnecessary.

As it turns out, I’m going to be 3 nights short of Hyatt Globalist, so the overnight in Mexico will help me pick up a cheap night. I may end up sleeping near the airport Friday or Sunday night also, so I expect that I’ll be able to make it to Globalist and the 60-night milestone benefits. That’s the limited upside of this jaunt to Mexico.

For the time being, I’ve tried emailing customer service to see if I can be manually credited, but reports at Flyertalk indicate that process is slow to respond and when they do, it sounds like the response is usually just that there is a backlog and they can’t process it right now. I’m just hoping that sending an email creates a case on which I can follow up if and when the system comes back online.

Should I also plan a last-minute trip to Europe?

Perhaps most frustrating is the combination of not knowing whether one or more than one of the missing airlines will ultimately credit or fail and not knowing when I’ll know.

If it’s just one of the three airlines that ultimately fails to credit, the Aeromexico flight will save me. But if I knew that two of those three airlines would ultimately fail to credit, I’d want to take a trip to Europe before the end of this month to pick up either Virgin Atlantic or Air Europa (depending on what fails). But will I know for sure what’s going to happen in time to book a last-minute trip to Europe? Is SAS going to be the Grinch that ruins my family Christmas plans? Do I need to consider booking what could be a completely unnecessary trip to Europe for insurance? 

I certainly think I ought to get credit for all three airlines I’m missing. And the trip to Mexico should give me a buffer. But I also know that what I think doesn’t ultimately decide whether I get the million miles. It is highly frustrating that SAS isn’t able to handle missing mileage claims in a timely manner. If they came back today and could tell me that I wasn’t going to get credit for reason X, Y, or Z, I would be upset (because I think I should get credit!), but at least I’d have time to fix it. With every day that passes, “make-up” flights become more scarce and more expensive and the logistics of planning a trip to save my shot at millionairehood become more complicated.

Should I plan a mid-week trip to Europe next week? One-way flights to Europe on Virgin Atlantic are running $700 to $1,000 in economy class from the East Coast next week. It looks like there are still some “cheap” seats (around $300 one-way) at the very end of the month (December 30/31), but they’re nonrefundable. Do I book something like that and cut holiday plans with my family short so that I can fly to Europe just in case my flights don’t credit? That seems crazy.

And yet losing out on 900,000 miles also seems crazy. Crazier still is that SAS isn’t able to even take a missing points claim. Truth be told, we knew going in that we might not know whether we got credit for all 15 airlines before the end of the year, but I expected that the trouble would be an airline like Xiamen or China Eastern where it was difficult to book a qualifying fare class and attach a frequent flyer number in the first place. I suppose I should be thankful that those airlines went through without a hitch since they would be even more difficult to fix at this point. Still, I’d have expected airlines like Air Europa and Virgin Atlantic would have made for an easier process in filing a claim.

Tracking SAS missing mileage credit claims

I mentioned above that I was able to fill out the form for a manual inquiry into my Air Europa flight and I sent emails about the Vietnam Airlines and Virgin Atlantic flights.

Thanks to a commenter at Flyertalk, I’ve learned that if you open the app, click “Me”, and then the menu next to your name here:

You can scroll down to “Customer Claims” and see your missing miles / retroactive credit claims.

I was pleasantly surprised that within just a few hours of emailing, both of my email claims were assigned Case ID numbers. I expect getting credit to be a slow process, but at least there is a case ID on which to follow up. The claim I had submitted for Air Europa is also there, but hasn’t been updated since I submitted it more than a week ago. We’ll see what happens.

Bottom line

I’m not really surprised that the SAS EuroBonus Millionaire campaign has left some of us in the lurch. We knew going in that there may be headaches. And we knew going in that retroactive mileage credit might take a while. To their credit, SAS updated their terms to note that retroactive claims can be made for travel through the end of the travel window (for travel that occurs through December 31st). But with no current mechanism to make those claims and no estimate as to when we might be able to expect that mechanism to be fixed, I find myself in a really uncomfortable spot. I think I absolutely have to go to Mexico this weekend since award flights are reasonable and I can get a domestic flight on AeroMexico for about $100, so it won’t cost me a ton of money and will give me some peace of mind. But I really don’t want to waste the time and money flying to Mexico only to find out that it was all for naught; if two of my three missing flights ultimately fail to credit, I might end up with almost nothing to show for this mileage run to Mexico. But is it worth pouring the money and time and holiday travel disruption into booking a second “insurance” trip to Europe? It feels like that should be an obvious “no”, but I sure would appreciate it if SAS could get their systems fixed and process missing mileage claims more quickly so I could make an informed decision in advance rather than being forced into a time and cost crunch during the busiest travel period.

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