Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is happening now! Follow us as Greg, Nick, and Stephen compete to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines before November 23rd. Who will complete the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
Update: UK Blog Head for Points has noted some updates to the original group of partners that were listed as being eligible. It turns out that Air Europa won’t be available for earning or redeeming points until sometime in October. Cash tickets purchased before then will have to be retroactively credited by December 20th.
Aerolineas Argentinas won’t be integrated until sometime in December, so probably too late for most folks that are hoping to include it in this challenge.
That means that, instead of having to fly 15 out of 17 partners, it’s now 15/15-16.
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Last month, SAS Airlines jumped ship from Star Alliance to SkyTeam, a move widely anticipated after Air France purchased a stake in the company. This month, SAS is celebrating the new alliance in a unique and pretty intriguing way.
Until the end of 2024, SAS is giving its members bonus points for flying SkyTeam partners and crediting the flights to the their SAS number. Paid and award flights that are booked with SAS EuroBonus points both count towards the promotion and the top level, which requires you to fly 15 different SkyTeam airlines, awards 1 million bonus points.
East Coast to Europe in business using EuroBonus points starts at 50K each way, so 1,000,000 points would potentially be enough for 10 roundtrip business class flights to Europe.
The Deal
- SAS has a “Eurobonus” promotion that awards bonuses for flying SkyTeam partner airlines and crediting the flights to SAS according to the following tiers:
- Fly 5 different partners – earn 10,000 bonus points
- Fly 10 different partners – earn 100,000 bonus points
- Fly 15 different partners – earn 1,000,000 bonus points
- All flight must be completed by 12/31/24
- Retroactive submission of any flights must be completed by 12/20/24
Terms and Conditions
- For the flight to count, EuroBonus points must be earned on or used to pay for the flight.
- You will be rewarded Bonus points (not Level points).
- In case of retroactive registration of a flight, it has to be submitted by December 20, 2024.
- Both regular and award trips (paid with points) count.
- It is the operating carrier that counts.
- If you book a flight where one segment is with e.g. SAS and the other with e.g. Delta, it counts as two partners for the challenge.
- You will be notified of the outcome in January 2025.
Quick Thoughts
This is one that’s calling out to digital nomads and/or gamers with plenty of time. Currently, there are 15 total airlines that are eligible for the promotion and which are also available currently for both earning and redeeming:
- Aeromexico
- Air France
- China Airlines
- China Eastern
- Delta
- Garuda Indonesia
- Kenya Airways
- KLM
- Korean Air
- Saudia
- SAS
- TAROM
- Vietnam Airlines
- Virgin Atlantic
- Xiamen Airlines
Eligible but not available for earning/redeeming until sometime in October:
- Air Europa
Eligible but not available for earning/redeeming until sometime in December (probably too late to be useful for the challenge):
- Aerolineas Argentinas
Because two of the airlines are currently unusable, it probably makes the most sense to build an itinerary that includes the other 15, or only use Air Europa with cash ticket that can (hopefully) be credited later. Only the operating carrier counts, so if you booked a flight that had one leg on Delta metal and one on SAS, it would count as two partners towards the promo.
Miles Earn and Burn estimated that it would cost somewhere between $1,125 – $5,000 to pull off all fifteen flights, assuming that you don’t book some of them using SAS points. However, let’s say it takes you $5K to do it. If you used all of the resulting 1 million points to book business class flights to Europe at 50K each, you’d be effectively spending $250 for each one. That’s a solid deal.
Of course, the main limiting factor is the time involved. Having to fly 15 different carriers across the US, South America, Europe, Africa and Asia will take some time. Could it be done in ~2.5 months between now and the end of December? Absolutely. But it will probably take a week or two, if you did it without taking any time to explore where you’d be flying.
Fifth freedom routes, where an airline operates between two countries that aren’t the its home base, could make this much, much easier. For instance, KLM flies a short between Buenos Aires and Santiago, while Virgin Atlantic flies a few shorts hops in the Caribbean. Australian Frequent Flyer maintains a great list of all/most global fifth freedom routes that’s worth checking out for anyone that’s considering taking the Scandinavian plunge.
Is this promo worth doing? For 99.95% of the world, absolutely not. But for folks with the time, inclination and sense of adventure, this could be a fantastic way to spend a month or two and up with quite a stash of useful points as part of the bargain.
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Does everything have to be booked through SAS or can I say booked with Korean Air and just input my SAS number?
Where you buy the ticket from doesn’t matter, so long as it’s a qualifying fare class (that’s a big one) and the operating carrier is one of the eligible partners.
I just want to make sure I am understanding one aspect of this. I have a Virgin Atlantic booking on a Korean Air flight. In other words, I use virgin air points to purchase a flight that is code shared with and occurring on Korean Air (and have both Virgin Atlantic and Korean Air confirmation numbers). If I am understanding what I read correctly, this will count as a Korean Air leg and not a Virgin Atlantic leg. Is that right?
It won’t count at all. You have to pay with cash or with SAS miles for a flight to count
I am confused about the Air Europa situation
I am planning to do this challenge in November
Will my Barcelona > Madrid flight Nov 9th count?
flight UX 7708
It should, yes. The issue is that it isn’t yet possible to tie your SAS number to the flight, but that should become possible soon. Just make sure to add the number before the flight and/or submit it to SAS afterwards for credit.
They say “travel” on their website… but is actual travel required, or could this be done as a case of airline seat running? …that would definitely save a bunch of hotel costs, connection headaches, and jetlag.
Flight tickets almost never post to your frequent flier account if you don’t take the flight. Maaaaaybe if you booked tickets with SAS miles and then didn’t fly them, but I wouldn’t count on it
2024 challenge part two, who ever completes this gets 20 bonus points, greg could come back and win it!
Years ago there were more of these crazy promotions. I never did them, but I think some Youtuber or blogger might.
Unless you are a true digital nomad that doesn’t care where you are in the world. You are spending (wasting) butt in time in Economy for 15 segments and 1.5-5K for 1 million SAS miles. The opportunity cost is huge with this to be honest.
Oh yeah, and let alone the fact that you need to live next to the airport so you can catch your next flight with endless jet leg. If you try to build multiple itineraries around to have few true vacations, that will work but the bill will certain go up significantly.
You guys should go for it! I would eagerly watch!
It appears most if not all basic economy flights don’t earn miles. So up the cost estimate by 50% 🙁
Depends on the airline. Most of them the cheapest available fares count (with the notable exception of Xiamen, which is quite expensive to get into a qualifying fare class)
This story reminds me of a guy who stitched together a single round-trip tier point run itinerary from Malta to Honolulu that alone would qualify for BA Gold. The cost was about 1400 GBP. He had to explain the fare construction rules to the booking agent. 🙂
Don’t really know how to link to FlyerTalk but someone over on that thread did an excellent deep dive into the EuroBonus program. I would personally make one additional caveat beyond what FlyerTalk user Beyounged writes and that’s that SAS might (probably will?) severely limit 50k o/w J saver space to the extent a ton of people with no prior connection to SAS flood the system with miles.
Did a bit of studying today about the program, and I know most folks here probably already know the EuroBonus system by heart, but I think it is worth highlighting some pro and con for people who have never touched SK before like me.
CON
miles expire after 4 years
all Skyteam partner bookings incur a 50EUR fee, which renders most short haul partner flights horrible value
Skyteam flights one way redemption is 60%, not half, of roundtrip cost
Hawaii and mainland US are considered separate regions
VN UX CI all require double points, rendering them useless as redemption partners
PRO
no YQ
Sweetspots
Short haul SAS within Europe and Scandinavia are great value
SAS long haul for 50k to most places is fantastic value
DL domestic US excluding Hawaii is 30k each way in J, if there is availability of course
India, Russia, Korea, China, Maldives, Japan, etc are all considered same region. So for 15k/30k for Y/J o/w, you can do
SVO-PVG-MLE, CTS-PVG-KMG when MU can be redeemed in the future
TPE-ICN-ALA, PEK-ICN-DEL
ICN-XMN-MLE
SEZ, LOS, CMN, IKA are all considered same region, 15k/30k for Y/J o/w
Greenland is considered Europe, so it is 15k in Y for CPH-SFJ for example if SK ever resumes it
Asia-Oceania is relatively cheap, for 78k you can do J one way SVO-PVG-AKL when you can do MU, ALA-ICN-SYD on KE, etc
78k J EU to North America is not bad without YQ since it does not split between MEX/JFK/LAX etc
Availability on long haul (only talking about J)
SK metal
there is hard black out dates for “saver”, which seems to be Dec 15-Jan 15, Jun 15-Sep 15
east coast US TATL on SK metal is relatively abundant, 50k one way is good deal, not absolutely jaw-dropping
west coast US TATL on SK metal is much rarer, but still can be found with a large degree of flexibility
Asia routes saver are non-existent
Partner metal
TATL is relatively poor, because DL is an abusive partner, AFKL offers way fewer saver seats to partners than their own program, and VS are rare
TPAC is only on KE because MU cannot be redeemed, and CI costs double, so very few as well. There are a few MF options but they fly to very few locations
EU-Asia consistently see KL releasing seats, so quite reliable, but remember saver for EU-BKK/SIN/DPS cost 110k+
The no YQ thing on award tickets is probably very much at risk. Air France, KLM and Delta will want YQ collected, and it will become even more likely to hit if SAS is given the governmental waivers and favors to join up with the DL-AF/KL-VS revenue-sharing transatlantic joint venture.
ITA, MEA and CSA are excluded entirely from the promo.
Aerolineas Argentina only counts for the promo if you redeem SAS points for an Aerolineas Argentinas flight. Same restriction for Air Europa.
And for the rest of the current Skyteam member airlines, you have to make sure the tickets are either SAS mileage earning or are booked using SAS points.
A lot of the SkyTeam airlines still have problems with loading in SAS frequent flyer numbers, and even us SAS elites are still trying to figure out whether we just enter the numbers or if we also have to enter in EBD/EBG/EBS in order to get the frequent flyer numbers into the booking and to show on the boarding passes.
And the deadline to seek missing mileage credit is December 20, even as flights up to December 31 count. That is one messed up restriction.
I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of days, but I almost gave up when I looked up the Kenya Airways BKK-CAN 5th freedom flight and could not find it. Kenya Airways has even removed BKK from their website. If anyone knows otherwise, please let me know. I don’t see flying Aerolineas right now, so it means including Kenya or Saudi. I don’t see how $1125 would be even close to possible. I’m thinking at least $3K even with being extremely flexible and having some non-rev benefits that would enable me to skip some long haul flying as part of the challenge.
Showing up fine for me on both their website and Google flights.
You guys absolutely need to do this as one of your competitions. 100% you do!
I can’t think of a better promotion for at least one member of the FM team to take advantage of!
I agree! Go for it!
It would be cool if somebody does this and documents it.
Travel-Dealz was nice enough to give us a sample routing: https://travel-dealz.com/deal/sas-eurobonus-million/
€2,475 in airfare for the lowest cost which that writer could find plus five weeks worth of hotel bills for points the writer values at €10,000 and which expire in four years.