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?
I have a confession to make: I’ve barely slept all week. In fact, I’m writing this post in the wee hours of the night after spending hours putting together one itinerary after another for our Million Mile Madness challenge. It’s become an all-out obsession in trying to thread the needle and create the perfect itinerary that can compete with what I think Greg and Stephen are going to cook up. Along the way, thanks to reader help, I’ve learned a few things that I think will be useful bits of information to store away for a rainy day. Before I forget what I’ve learned, I wanted to put several random learnings into a post here.
Don’t neglect airline apps
On this week’s podcast, I shared the fact that I have a habit of using hotel apps to search for availability and make reservations but that I almost exclusively shop for flights on a computer. I’m constantly reminded that I shouldn’t be exclusively in either realm, and this week was the latest reminder of that fact.
I had been trying to connect some nots on the trip and I wanted to book an award ticket from Taipei to Jakarta (I’ve since abandoned this iteration of my plan I think). I used AwardTool.com to run an award search and I was surprised to find that the best deal shown was flying Taipei-based China Airlines, which would cost just 26,000 Air France / KLM Flying Blue miles and about $33.
I went to AirFrance.us to confirm that this was available before I transferred points. However, unfortunately, it said that there were no available flights.
I thought that must have been a mistake, so I hit “search” again. The page initially moved forward to a calendar, but then returned to that “no flights available” message. I figured that AwardTool must have had something wrong and I didn’t think much more about it.
However, later in the day, I decided to run the searching using Pointsyeah.com. Sure enough, Pointsyeah showed the China Airlines flight available (note that the flight costs 26,000 Air France / KLM Flying Blue mils, but you’re seeing a 20% transfer bonus from Amex reflected in the number of points you’d need to transfer (22,000).
I thought for a moment that it must be phantom availability. However, I scrolled a bit further and noticed that Pointsyeah also showed Delta having access to the same flight.
With two partners showing access to that space, I no longer thought it could be phantom. Both Award Tool and PointsYeah said that there were six available seats on this flight and they’re available to be booked with multiple programs. I figured that it had to be real.
Readers have many times suggested using apps when desktop sites don’t work, so I gave the Air France app a try. To my pleasant surprise, while the Air France website said no flights were available at all, the Air France app showed that flight available in both economy (13,000 miles) and business class (26,000 miles), and it wasn’t even the only flight option available.
More of the story: also try searching in an airline or hotel program’s app as well as the desktop site.
Second moral of the story: award search tools are incredibly useful. In the days before award search tools, I would have only searched this on desktop and thought that there simply weren’t any seats available. I would have missed out!
Expedia.com displays airline fare classes
If you read my “Frequently Asked Questions” post about the SAS EuroBonus Millionaire promotion the other day, you already picked up on this tip, but it’s been incredibly useful for this challenge and probably will be again in the future. Many airline booking engines — both online travel agencies and even airline websites — make it somewhere between “really hard” and “absolutely impossible” to figure out the fare class that you’re booking. Expedia.com makes it really easy. Just click the “show details” button underneath the flight information and it shows the fare class.
I usually don’t care about fare class, but this challenge is showing me that sometimes it matters. Not all of the carriers / routes I’ve searched have shown up on Expedia, but when there’s an Expedia link from Google Flights, it’s making my life much easier!
There are some terrific SkyTeam bargains departing or passing through China
If I’ve learned one thing from this challenge, it’s that SkyTeam is expensive. If I’ve learned two things, it’s that the Chinese SkyTeam carriers can be ridiculously cheap.
Take for instance this Xiamen Airlines itinerary from Seoul, South Korea to Jakarta, Indonesia. Note that this fare would not qualify for the SAS EuroBonus competition (the cheapest Xiamen fares don’t earn any EuroBonus miles).
That’s about eight and a half hours of flight time — and a 23.5hr stop — for $114. That works out to paying less than $13.50 per hour.
It’s not just limited to long economy class flights: there are also some terrific bargains on short business class segments within China. Take for instance this business class flight on China Eastern Airlines that can be booked in business class for just $104.
While that’s just a recliner seat and just a 1hr and 40 minute flight, that’s nonetheless dirt cheap to fly up front.
The challenge with flights like that is that the cheapest prices on flights like that tend to from smaller online travel agencies. The difference in price from one to the next can raise an eyebrow.
One reader explained the disparity saying that agencies outside of China mostly only have access to full-fare business class whereas entities based in China or owned by Chinese entities may have access to discounted business class fare buckets.
For the purposes of this competition, that’s really tricky. I can’t see for sure what the fare class on the above itinerary is with eDreams or Trip.com. I bet that since this is a business class cabin, the fare bucket is probably qualifying. However, in the interest of playing it safe, I’ve been planning to avoid booking via unknown OTAs in favor of booking somewhere where I can find the fare class information (whether that be directly on the airline website or an OTA like Expedia that displays the fare class, which has led to having to pass up some very tempting bookings!
It’s worth noting that I may have been accused of playing it too safe on matters where a million miles are hanging in the balance, but I probably won’t lose too much sleep if I earn a million miles :-).
Don’t forget the secondary airports
This challenge has been an excellent reminder that many cities have more than one airport. Sure, I know that New York and London have multiple airports. And I know that Oslo has two (or at least that Ryanair sold me a ticket to Oslo that certainly didn’t land anywhere near the “Oslo airport hotel” that I had booked!). And I learned all about Bangkok’s Don Mueang (DMK) airport during our 40K to Far Away challenge when I bought an Air Asia ticket from Tokyo to Brisbane with a layover in Bangkok expecting some cheap street eats only to find out that an Air Asia ticket through DMK doesn’t allow you to leave the airport.
But perhaps that Air Asia snafu and my previous Ryanair experience have fooled me into the errant thought that secondary airports are only for low-cost-carriers like Ryanair and Air Asia. did you know that Seoul, Bangkok, Beijing, Istanbul, Shanghai, and Taipei all have more than one airport? Spoiler alert: I knew about some, but not all of those….and the discovery of new airports has certainly influenced my planning process (thanks very much to helpful readers!). It turns out it isn’t just low cost carriers that fly to secondary airports after all.
About those low-cost-carriers in Asia though….they sure to make it hard to book SkyTeam flights!
It always pays to read the comments
I’ve long been an advocate of reading the comments. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve learned something just by reading what people have to say about it.
Nowhere is that likely to be truer than in the comments on our journal posts. I’ve intentionally avoided looking at the comments on Greg’s and Stephen’s posts so as not to take ideas that were meant for them. However, I have to say that the comments on my journal post have had a masterclass worth of tips regarding routes, booking channels, nested flight options, and a lot more. When this whole thing is over, I look forward to spending time reading through comments on Greg’s and Stephen’s journal posts to see how readers helped them and what I can learn there, too.
As a reminder, whether you’re looking to add your two cents of help or you’re just curious to read what others have been cooking up, you can go to our journal posts here:
And don’t forget to keep an eye on our Million Mile Madness hub page for all the latest developments.
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
I don’t see any toggle on the Air France app to perform an award search (it only shows in cash). Fix?
Hair Plugs?
Nick, since Expedia always shows the fare class, does it make you more comfortable booking with Expedia instead of the airline itself (if the airline doesn’t explicitly show the fare class)? I’ve always tried to book directly with the airline, but in this situation, the fare class is so important, I’d book it through Expedia just to be sure.
I booked China Airlines with KLM earlier this yera and at the time KLM had the flight but Air France did not. Its not too often that I check KLM but it can show flights that AF does not show.
I have also run into the Air France app finding better availability for award routes when booking summer 2025 return flights from Europe. In particular the Air France app will sometimes let you search multi-city award tickets which doesn’t work on Air France or KLM’s websites. Technically it’s not supposed to work in app either but I was able to price out a route with enough persistence playing with it over multiple days. This allows you to build your own stopover when the saver award availability (typically 50K business between NA and EUR) isn’t there on a non-stop route.
The particular route I stumbled on this was Cork to Phoenix via Paris (ORK – CDG – PHX). Searching ORK to PHX with no stopover on the Air France and KLM websites there was only award availability in the current month and end of calendar, the other 10 months showed no availability. Searching the same route in app I could at least get it to come up though with two stop itineraries. Playing around with the multi-city search enough I was able to get it to bring up ORK – CDG and CDG – PHX as a multi-city award (which I can’t seem to replicate searching again now as AF keeps giving me the no multi-city bookings popup!).
Interestingly the multi-city route was cheaper than booking the combination of one ways – priced out to 80K + $400 per person when the nonstop CDG – PHX alone was coming up at 130K + $200. Called in to place the award on hold and later book, first agent came up with a much higher price but the second one could book it as a stopover at an even cheaper 60K + $400.
Back to Nick’s point, persistence in searching and even just calling in to price awards can pay off big time. I’m surprised that the AF app can find a non-stop award route the website can’t, but only a little surprised after my experience with them.
Ridiculous these companies’ IT is to a point where something works on a mobile app but not on a desktop. Just embarrassing. I usually have the opposite problem where you can’t do half the things you need to on the mobile app but you can on the desktop website….
I’m pretty sure that Greg, at least, is looking at comments in all the journal posts as fair game (he included some in his list of “most useful so far”), so you may be disadvantaging yourself unnecessarily by not reading the other journals.
What I’ve learned so far:
Do we still not know whether SAS Connect flights count?? been agonizing my wimpy butt off over this…
This is the closest thing I’ve found, from an SAS rep responding to a Flyertalk user via email:
“We’re excited that you’re interested in participating in the challenge!
SAS Link, SAS Connect, XFly, etc. are considered wetlease partners and they operate as just SAS, this is equally true for other airlines that have wetlease partners as long as nothing else is stated here https://www.flysas.com/en/eurobonus/…s/?filter=earn. What’s important is to make sure that it’s not a so called codeshare flight, because that could cause it not to be qualifying depending if the codeshare partner is a qualifying airline apart of SkyTeam or not.
You can also fly with different SkyTeam airlines in the same itinerary and gain multiple steps with the challenge, e.g. flying with SAS to JFK and with Delta to another domestic point.
If you have any more questions then don’t hesitate to reach out.”
This is the closest confirmation I’ve found, via an SAS rep responding to a Flyertalk user via email:
“We’re excited that you’re interested in participating in the challenge!
SAS Link, SAS Connect, XFly, etc. are considered wetlease partners and they operate as just SAS, this is equally true for other airlines that have wetlease partners as long as nothing else is stated here [link to Eurobonus FAQ page]. What’s important is to make sure that it’s not a so called codeshare flight, because that could cause it not to be qualifying depending if the codeshare partner is a qualifying airline apart of SkyTeam or not.
You can also fly with different SkyTeam airlines in the same itinerary and gain multiple steps with the challenge, e.g. flying with SAS to JFK and with Delta to another domestic point.
If you have any more questions then don’t hesitate to reach out.”
Not relevant but but notworthy, the Marriott app will occasionally have lower redemption rates than the desktop website for the same hotel, same dates. Always worth a quick check before booking.
I only know the right way to do something because I’ve already found all of the wrong ways to do it. Sorry for your frustrations but thank you for sharing your solutions. No other travel hobby blog really gets into this stuff . . . you teach. It is what differentiates FM from the pack and makes it the true go-to hobby site. (Now, get some sleep.)
I’m glad to hear that secondary airports are part of your strategy, and hope that PVG/SHA is one of them while flying China Eastern. About a decade ago I did just that to tease out a 23-hour visa-free layover in Shanghai while en route from SFO to Seoul.
Your Air Asia DMK experience was a surprise to me, so I went over to your 40K To Far Away post to read the details. Coincidentally, I’d flown something very similar a few months earlier (March 2019), departing Beijing (after a 144-hr TWOV stay) to Sydney on an Air Asia ticket, with a 14½ hour layover in Kuala Lumpur. Maybe it was because Air Asia is a Malaysian carrier and KUL is its primary hub, but leaving the airport on that ticket wasn’t an issue.
I would have been similarly miffed if I wasn’t able to get to the city center for some layover r&r; that low-cost carrier ticket was a key part of an itinerary that allowed me to close a $450 “combinable fares” cash ticket for SFO-PEK//MEL-SFO…probably the cheapest cents per mile purchase I’ll ever make.
Anyway, hopefully there are no unpleasant surprises for you this time around; best of luck on this challenge!
Ha, can’t speak of others, but the ‘secondary airports’ for Shanghai, Taipei and Seoul are airports closer to city center commanding fare premiums. Think HND to Tokyo. There are East Asia metropolitan shuttle flights between HND, SHA, GMP and TSA, these flights always sell at a premium compared to flights between NRT, PVG, ICN and TPE.
Great point. Secondary in name recognition to those of us who don’t travel to the areas regularly. But great point that they aren’t secondary in terms of convenience!
I had the opportunity to fly into TSA for the first time recently. Great little airport. Probably saved at least 90 minutes versus flying into TPE, which usually has very slow immigration lines and is further away from the city. TSA is literally four or five metro/subway stops from the center. HND also is a major time saver, but mainly due to its proximity. Immigration there sucks as much as any other Japanese airport these days.
This is part of the reason why this challenge is so awesome. When the FM team learns something, we all learn together. Best of luck with the challenge!
Remember that flights booked with Flying Blue miles (or any miles besides SAS Eurobonus) will NOT count towards this challenge.
I have sent a mail offering my help. Look for the email from Markus.
“I had been trying to connect some n(d)ots on the trip and I wanted to book an award ticket from Taipei to Jakarta” — translation: positioning flight
Definitely a good point for Nick. If anything, consider editing that section to add that we won’t earn for SAS purposes… but it had got me to reconsider keeping apps on my phone.
As Jules said, that would have been positioning. Every post about the challenge so far (including the frequently asked questions post the other day), has addressed the fact that you need to either earn or redeem SAS miles for a flight to count – and I specifically used the example of a flying blue award not counting in the FAQs post the other day. Still, you’re right that it’s a good idea to add a note about the same in this post – I’ll update that, thanks.