SAS EuroBonus Millionaire promo frequently asked questions [Million Mile Madness 2024]

Last week, we announced our Frequent Miler Million Mile Madness 2024, whereby Greg, Stephen, and I are competing to complete a Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) EuroBonus promotion to earn one million miles by flying 15 SkyTeam carriers by the end of 2024. In response to our competition, we’ve received a lot of questions. We don’t have all of the answers, but in this post I intend to address many of the most commonly asked questions regarding the promotion as best we understand it, which will be particularly important for anyone else considering completing the challenge to fly 15 SkyTeam airlines by the end of the year to being in the million miles.

What is the SAS EuroBonus millionaire promotion?

For full details about the EuroBonus Millionaire promotion, see our previous post about it and our challenge launch post. In a nutshell, the airline is offering the chance to earn 1 million bonus miles if you fly 15 qualifying sky team carriers by the end of 2024 and either earn or redeem SAS miles on those flights.

SAS EuroBonus millionaire FAQs

There are a number of caveats with this promotion, starting with the fact that you need to earn or redeem SAS miles on each flight and continuing with restrictions like the fact that not all Sky team carriers are included and not all fair classes qualify. Here are the questions we’ve received the most and the answers as best we understand them based on our reading of the promotion terms and following of reader reports and comments.

Which airlines are eligible?

Not all SkyTeam carriers are eligible for this promotion. Furthermore, some of the airlines that are technically eligible are not well integrated (for instant, you may not be able to enter your SAS EuroBonus number for all flights, which will require requesting retroactive credit after flying. All that said, here are the airlines with whom you could potentially earn or redeem SAS EuroBonus miles for this promotion:

• Aerolíneas Argentinas (but note that this won’t be integrated until sometime in December, possibly not soon enough for the promotion, so an award ticket might be the only way to include Aerolineas Argentinas — and none of us have existing SAS miles).
• AeroMexico
• Air Europa (integrating sometime this month; we intend to travel in November, so this should be on the table)
• Air France
• China Airlines
• China Eastern
• Delta Air Lines
• Garuda Indonesia
• Kenya Airways
• KLM
• Korean Air
• SAS
• SAUDIA
• TAROM
• Vietnam Airlines
• Virgin Atlantic
• Xiamen Air

Do all flights on the partners above count?

The short answer is no, not all flights taken on the above carriers count.

As noted above, you must either earn or redeem SAS EuroBonus miles for a flight to qualify.

For starters, that means that you’ll need to attach your SAS EuroBonus frequent flyer number to the booking. If you buy a ticket for travel on Delta under a qualifying fare class (more on this to come) and you credit the flight to your SAS EuroBonus account (earning miles with SAS), that will count. However, if you have your Delta SkyMiles number on that reservation because you want your elite benefits, you won’t earn SAS miles and therefore the flight won’t be eligible.

A level deeper yet, not all fare classes qualify. You’ll need to check each individual airline’s page on the SAS site to see which fare classes qualify. Some airlines have more qualifying fare classes than others. Keep in mind that if you buy the cheapest available ticket, there’s a chance that ticket will not be eligible to earn miles. You’ll need to do your research to make sure that you’re booking a qualifying fare class (more on that in a bit).

Do flights booked with miles count?

Again, you must earn or redeem SAS EuroBonus miles for a flight to count. In other words, the only flights booked with miles that will count are the those booked with EuroBonus miles.

In other words, if you book an AeroMexico flight using your Air France / KLM Flying Blue miles, that will not count for the purposes of this promotion. The only award tickets you can fly must be booked with SAS miles.

For paid flights, which fare classes are eligible?

Knowing which fare classes are eligible is the relatively easy part: SAS Publishes separate charts for each of their partners demonstrating which fare classes are eligible to earn miles and how many miles they earn in terms of the percentage of distance flown. Simple go to this page and click on the airline you intend to fly: https://www.flysas.com/en/eurobonus/partners/airlines/.

The more challenging component than knowing which classes are eligible is knowing which fare class you’re booking. Not all booking engines clearly display the fare class being booked (in fact, most don’t show this clearly).

As an example, see this flight from Jakarta, Indonesia to Bangkok, Thailand on Garuda Indonesia from Google Flights:

As you can see, the price of the flight varies a bit from one site to the next.

If you go directly to the Garuda Indonesia website, you’ll see three different economy class options – “Eco Promo”, “Eco Affordable”, and “Eco Flexible”. Unfortunately, the fare class of each is not clearly visible.

Based on current currency conversation rates, the “Eco Promo” is about $205, the “Eco Affordable” is about $336, and the “Eco Flexible” is about $547.

With some airlines, after you select a fare, you’ll see a fare class indicated on the next page. You may have to expand the flight details. Unfortunately, in this case, Garuda doesn’t clearly show the fare class after I’ve selected “Eco Promo”.

One trick that I sometimes find helpful is looking for a link to the “Fare Rules”. In this case, Garuda is calling it “Purchase Conditions” — you’ll see that link in the bottom left corner of the screen shot above.

By clicking around in those rules, I’ll sometimes find mention of the fare basis code. Typically, the first letter of this code is the fare class. As you can see below, the fare basis code for this fare starts with an “S”, so I’d guess this to be an “S” fare.

However, you won’t always find the fare basis code within the fare rules (frustratingly, I have run into that several times this week).

One trick I like to use is running a search via ITA Matrix, which is a somewhat nerdy tool for looking up airfares. It’s not a booking engine — it’s great for setting specific parameters, but you can’t book directly through ITA Software. Below, I’ve entered the search parameters. Notice that under “Routing Codes”, I entered C:GA — that’s just to limit search results to nonstop flights on Garuda Indonesia.

Sure enough, ITA Matrix confirms that the least expensive fare at IDR 3,213,000 (which, as a reminder, is about $205 in USD) is indeed an “S” class fare.

The SAS website confirms here that “S” fares on Garuda Indonesia earn 30% of mileage flown with SAS EuroBonus. That’s good news — it means that this flight should earn miles.

Let’s pretend though for a moment that “S” fares didn’t count. Let’s imagine that only “Y” fares counted and I wanted to know whether I had to buy “Eco Affordable” or “Eco Flexible” in order to earn miles. You can specify fare basis codes with ITA Matrix to search for a specific fare class and see how much it should cost.

Going back to the ITA Matrix home page, you can enter “F bc=” in the “Extension codes” box plus a letter to specify a fare basis code. Here I’ve entered “F bc=Y” to search for fare basis code Y. You can even enter multiple fare basis codes separated by a line like this: F bc=Y|bc=B|bc=M — though for the purposes of this example, I’m just searching Y.

Sure enough, ITA Matrix confirms that the price for a “Y” fare matches the “Eco Flexible” price from the Garuda website.

It’s worth noting that some online travel agencies do a great job of displaying fare class, which makes some of the research above unnecessary. For instance, in this case, although Expedia shows up in Google Flights with a higher price of $233, when I clicked through to Expedia it showed a price of $207, and by clicking the hyperlink to “show details” below the initial flight info, I could easily find that this is an “S” fare class.

Unfortunately, it isn’t always as easy as this example. As you can see, some Online Travel Agencies, like Trip.com, are advertising a price like $199. That’s a bit less than the official price of the “S” fare. Is that a different fare class? Is there a chance that it’s some sort of a bulk fare that won’t count to earn miles? I don’t know, and that’s been a major point of frustration for me. Trip.com in particular (along with Chinese language OTAs) lists much cheaper flight prices for the Chinese SkyTeam airlines than what you’ll find elsewhere, but it doesn’t display fare codes. That’s frustrating.

One reader explained that Trip.com (and China-based search engines) show fare classes that aren’t available to OTAs outside of China. For instance, that reader explained that for business class fares, OTAs outside of China only have access to the full-fare business class and not the discounted business class fare buckets, whereas Trip.com (and parent company Ctrip) have access to a greater range of fare classes. I wish it were easy to see which fare class you’re booking, because in some cases that would give me far more peace of mind.

Being sure to book a fare class that earns miles is perhaps the most challenging part of this challenge. It would really stink to go to the time and expense of flying around the world only to get home and find out that we didn’t earn miles on China Eastern and Xiamen Airlines, with the only way to fix that being to plan a separate trip to China. The million mile challenge is not for the faint of heart in this regard :-).

Do code-shares count?

In some cases yes, but in some (important) cases, no. Code shares only count if the operating airline is in the list of qualifying airlines. For example, a flight operated by Air Europa Express does NOT count as an Air Europa flight. That’s a big distinction. In some cases, over multiple flights on the same day, the operating carrier can vary between Air Europa and Air Europa Express. The price isn’t always wildly more for Air Europa as shown here, but the point here is that you have to be careful to select a qualifying flight.

Air Europa Express is an example where we’ve seen a report on Flyertalk from someone who followed up with SAS for mileage credit and was explicitly told that Air Europa Express doesn’t count.

I’d therefore be equally concerned about flights operated by Air France “HOP” and KLM “Cityhopper”.

I don’t know for sure that Air France “HOP” flights or KLM “Cityhopper” flights won’t earn miles, but I’m trying to be intentional in my planning to avoid anything that might cause a problem earning credit. It seems that subsidiaries like these are risky.

I’ve heard similar things from readers about certain flights on China Eastern Airlines and Xiamen Air as well. For instance, China Eastern owns Shanghai Airlines and I’ve seen some search results show up that include segments on Shanghai Airlines. Those Shanghai Airlines flights may not (probably won’t?) earn miles with SAS (though I did see a report on Flyertalk where someone said that they did receive credit for a Shanghai Airlines flight and, ironically, not their China Eastern flight!).

If you’re considering pursuing this challenge, you really have to do your homework and be sure that the flights you book are being operated by qualifying carriers.

It’s worth noting that, according to the terms, the operating
carrier is what matters. For instance, if you book a Virgin Atlantic codeshare through Delta, you should earn credit for a Virgin Atlantic flight,
not a Delta flight (provided that it’s an eligible fare class).

I wasn’t able to attach my SAS number to a reservation during the booking process. How can I add it after the fact?

Unfortunately, this is going to be a problem in some cases. Some SkyTeam airlines don’t yet recognize SAS EuroBonus numbers, so it may not be possible to enter your frequent flyer number on the reservation.

Officially, the SAS app says:

If you are not able to add your EuroBonus number into the booking, please ask the check in staff for help.

In practice, that may be easier said than done. I’ve seen reports of success with that, but also reports of people running into problems trying to get that done.

In advance of your flight, you can of course try bringing up your booking on different SkyTeam websites to see if you can edit / enter frequent flyer details. I’ve seen reports that some flights will automatically show up in your SAS app if you get your frequent flyer number attached (this probably isn’t the case with all carriers).

If you’re unable to get your number assigned at all (which sounds like it might happen with some carriers), you’ll need to file a claim for retroactive flight credit. This is the page on the SAS website where you claim missing miles. The form says that you can claim missing miles at the earliest starting 8 days after your trip. That’s an important restriction to keep in mind!

Remember that according to the promotion terms, retroactive registration for a flight needs to be submitted by December 20, 2024. This means that the latest flight date for which you’ll be able to claim retroactive credit is either December 11th or 12th (depending on whether “by December 20” means before December 20 or by the end of the day on December 20). While you technically have until December 31st to fly your 15 carriers, keep in mind that if a flight does not automatically credit, you’re going to be out of luck on claiming retroactive credit if the flight occurs on or after December 13th since you won’t be within the window to file a retroactive claim.

Note also that the website says that retroactive mileage claims will take up to 3 weeks to post to your account, but processing times have apparently slowed considerably from there.

Is there an age limit for participants? Can children earn the million miles?

I don’t know the official answer here, but it looks like children age 2 or above can join SAS EuroBonus if enrolled through a parent or guardian — see this page for more info. I don’t see any terms excluding members from the million mile promotion based on age, so I would expect that any EuroBonus member (including your kids) could earn the million miles. I’m not going to be testing this out myself — it may be worth reaching out to the airline before you buy your flights.

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