We’ve now learned a bit more about the scale of participation in the SAS EuroBonus Million Mile Challenge, which includes some startling statistics about how many completed the challenge and where they came from. Initial reports that 6% of travelers who completed the challenge were from North Korea were incorrect: I’ve updated the stats below.
SAS EuroBonus Million Mile Challenge: Statistics Revealed
LoyaltyLobby shared some statistics about the promotion and I cannot say that I am surprised, both by the number of participants and the country breakdowns.
- Over 900 people became million milers
- 722 of these 900+ (78%) enrolled in SAS EuroBonus after the campaign started
- Gender breakdown:
- Male 70%
- Female 30%
- Most participants were in the 30-39 age group with the average age 40 years old
- The oldest person to complete the challenge was 73 (from the US) and 12 people under the age of 18 completed the challenge (including my son Augustine), with the youngest being 4 years old (from Japan)
- EuroBonus status breakdowns of million milers:
- Basic 77%
- Silver 8%
- Gold 12%
- Diamond 2%
- The newest million miler enrolled December 16, 2025 and oldest May 5, 1992
- 85% of the millionaires have been EuroBonus members for under 2 years
- The average millionaire visited:
- 4 continents
- 17 countries
- 23 airports
- SAS was the airline flown by most
- All millionaires visited Mainland China
- 92% of all flights were booked in economy class
- Nine people visited six continents (Africa, Asia, South America, North America, Europe, Oceania) while 22% visited at least five of them
- 173 million miler flyers (18%) were from the United States
- 149 million miler flyers (16%) were from Japan
- 130 million miler flyers (14%) were from South Korea
- 112 million miler flyers (12%) were from China
- 67 million miler flyers (7%) were from Sweden
(I’ve updated these numbers)
While my son Augustine may be an outlier, I certainly fit right in with the “average” million miler:
- male
- 30s
- EuroBonus Gold status
- four continents visited (North America, Europe, Africa, Asia)
- 17 countries visited
- 22 airports
It’s no surprise that Japan and South Korea had so many participants when this promo was heavily pushed by social media influencers.
900 million miles…that’s a lot. I’m struggling to find award space to Europe this spring, summer, and fall in business class or premium economy class and frankly, most dates do not even have economy class…
Finally, I realize that many of you are still waiting for your Vietnam Airlines flight to credit and as of today, are not in receipt of your million miles even though you met all the requirements of the challenge. Please keep me updated…I’ll be monitoring the situation and will hold SAS accountable if there are any denials made based on their inadequate and broken IT infrastructure.
But I’m not worried…even conceding it has already taken too long, I am comfortable in saying that SAS will honor this promo and you will eventually receive your points.
I’m so thankful I got to complete this promotion, even as I’m already having trouble redeeming my SAS EuroBonus points. It was also great to meet several fellow participants along the way (in Jeddah, Jakarta, Xiamen, Taipei, and Shanghai)
We few, we fellow few, we band of brothers…
You can read about my own journey here.
> Read More: Route Planning For My SAS Million Mile Challenge
Such a productive means of spending one’s time
Such a noble and selfless charitable accomplishment .
All reaching such a pinnacle of human civilization .
Wow. Are you this boring in real life, too?
Yes , verrrryy boring .
I question if any of the DPRK people were really from there or if there was a miscoding of Republic of Korea. I have seen this happen in other surveys.
I think this makes most sense.
Agreed. North Korean passport holders need a visa for nearly every country in the world. The idea that someone would spend the time, money and effort to obtain all these visas, not to mention the permissions they would need from their own government, just to earn miles, is quite hard to believe.
When typing in Korea in the address field while joining EuroBonus, North Korea pops up first as the default. While the flag difference is obvious and South Korea pops up at the same time right under it, people who rushed to sign up may have just not cared at the time.
There may be some North Koreans living in South Korea who can’t get South Korean citizenship because their North Korean citizenship came from a North Korean mother but non-Korean dad, but I guess that SAS used member address on file and not citizenship for the list.
I suspect there are more Swedes and Americans to be added to the Million point rolls than Koreans at this point as there are lots of outstanding missing flights to still be credited. And it’s not just VN. SAS is still problematic with UX flight credits and KQ delayed flight credits.
I’m still waiting on one SV and one MF flight. Thankfully, the other segments on those carriers posted.
Hey Matthew,so a couple of friends & i completed this challenge on December 14th, it’s now close to 2 months later we still haven’t received the million miles,looking online, I’m seeing numerous people are having similar issues especially regarding retroclaiming Vietnam airlines, we’ve reached out to sas many times via email,chat,phone & social media ,response has overwhelmingly been terrible with generally no one responding or a seemingly automated response…Too add insult to the injury sas has credited 900 people with the miles( seemingly every blogger/influencer has received there’s) and put a “celebrity video” announcing the winners…is there any recourse or action you can recommend for us to do? We have fulfilled our side of the bargain & flown the 15 airlines in the correct fare classes..now it’s sas turn to fulfill there end.
Please keep me updated. I’m happy to reach out on your behalf.
Can’t wait to read your review of their London to Sälen route.
I’ve read some comments from many South Koreans whose addresses glitched to North Korea. Regardless, it’s quite interesting how South Korea dominated the game. Never had that on my bingo card.
While I and my associates were around doing this at JED, BKK, SGN, CGK/DPS and CAN checking out who was likely doing the promo, after Americans it was Koreans we encountered more than anyone else. Only in the last 8 days did it seem like Scandinavians picked up while Koreans had already finished.
I ran into one Norwegian, two Danish, and one American.
The most Swedes I ran into at the non-European airports doing this were at BKK and DPS. Danes at BKK and CAN. Elsewhere in the Old World ex-Europe for me, it was Koreans or Americans whom I encountered most often doing this.
My Swedar is strong. My Danedar is not as strong as my Swedar unless the Danes speak.
“…when this ormo…” Promo. It’s been a while from me, couldn’t help it 😀
korea! So was it a blogger pushing it? Or maybe deal looks more attractive considering fewer credit cards? Or maybe the value prop is better due to KE being ST? I find it shocking that anyone beat the US aka us.
The Koreans had at least two very active online channels about this. The one I was shown had something like 150 members, and the Koreans I encountered in Saudi Arabia and Indonesia were active in those forums. A mistake I made was to assume some of them were couples who planned to travel together but they were mostly strangers to each other.
All the promo runners I ran into Asia were very friendly. Nice group of people doing this.
I am surprised no one else commented about any Christmas elf runner(s). Amusingly I sighted one at PRG, OTP, IST, CAI and JED. An American woman dressed up as Santa’s helper.
The Koreans had at least two very active online channels about this. The one I was shown had something like 150 members, and the Koreans I encountered in Saudi Arabia and Indonesia were active in those forums. A mistake I made was to assume some of them were couples who planned to travel together but they were mostly strangers to each other.
All the promo runners I ran into Asia were very friendly. Nice group of people doing this.
I am surprised no one else commented about any Christmas elf runner(s). Amusingly, I sighted one at PRG, OTP, IST, CAI and JED. An American woman dressed up as Santa’s helper.
If you want to hold SAS accountable, you should ask them now why they issue celebratory statistics when they have not settled their bill so to speak. It a very questionable business practice to delay indefinitely, intentionally making it sound like you are doing tour customers a favor when all you are doing is buying yourself more time to clean up the mess you created.
All of us who are waiting did our part, it’s time for SAS to do theirs. This is now beyond laughable.
As for your blog? I wonder if you would be so understanding and report all of the smoke from SAS the way you do if you were waiting as well. I bet you the article would read significantly different.
Yes, you are no doubt correct on the last point. But my experience was smooth – and I cannot deny it. Air Europa, China Airlines, Vietnam Airlines did not credit initially, but all did instantly after inputting the info on the request missing miles page. I know others have different experinces and while I don’t think it is a conspiracy, I know SAS has to do better…
I suspect that it’ll be a very long time indeed before SAS l give you points for flying Finnair!
I’m still missing AR and VN and it’s been two months now. While I have received my million points, this conduct doesn’t fill me with confidence.
Meant to say Air Europa!
“The newest million miler enrolled December 16, 2025 [!!!] and oldest May 5, 1992” If you can time travel, what good are 1 million miles?
Oh and here I thought that over 60 North Koreans managed to escape the country and complete their SAS million miler challenges.
Thank GOD I have Matthew here to set me straight.
Yep … I was curious how North Koreans would be able to participate ?
Not very likely .
It would be interesting to know where the other 33% were from.
I think this says a lot about how and who plays the mileage game across the world. So to know the rest of the percentages would be very insightful. It’s clear the U.S. dominates as expected in mileage runs. Interesting that Japan and South Korea are next. I would not have expected that.
But these numbers are really telling what I have always recognized and believed…Europeans are far less interested in loyalty mileage schemes. Perhaps more so because they can obtain premium cabins for cash far less than Americans who are constantly gouged in this manner. Japan and South Korea may be similar in that respect. It’s really fascinating stuff and I’m surprised SAS is releasing this data.
Anyway , over 900 people totally wasted their time .
An extra waste was visiting commie China where people are not free to think .
At least one Million point runner got sent to Chinese health quarantine check and ended up not only getting swabbed a few times but also being made to give blood draws for tests. But it was professionally handled as far as the traveler could tell.
The other thing about Europeans is that the income distribution is basically a lot flatter than anywhere else. In France or Italy you can have the average hotel receptionist or supermarket worker earning €2k per month with a bit of overtime, which is also the salary of their neighbour with a PhD in biochemistry working at a lab, the guy that drives the refuse truck that collects their rubbish, and the marketing manager in the local new car dealership. In Mexico City the supermarket worker probably only makes a quarter of the marketing manager’s salary, and in the USA the PhD could be earning a pretty enormous amount of money.
As a result, the number of people in Europe who can drop €3k or whatever on a business class ticket must be rather small in comparison with other countries which have similar (and even lower) populations and per capita incomes. People do travel a lot, but there’s no real reason to bother with miles for continental flying (‘you’ve just spent four hours flying across Europe, here’s 186 miles for your trouble, you only need another 24,814 miles and €48 for an one-way business class redemption on a 2-hour flight’), and intercontinental travel is mostly for gap years and honeymoons.
Credit cards also have to make do with the interchange fee caps, so they can’t afford to issue tons of miles to their members, so it’s no wonder that a lot of airlines are either a bit indifferent about loyalty schemes (e.g. LOT may have multiple intercontinental destinations but they can’t be bothered to leave an FFP which is effectively run by one of their competitors) or looking for ways to tap into the US market (e.g. AFKL doing a great job with points transfer partnerships, BA doing a less good job with moving to spend thresholds for status).
Wage compression is indeed much more true of European high income countries than in the US, but the graduate degree biotech worker in Denmark or Sweden will more typically be living in a home 2-8 times more valuable than that of the grocery store clerk or waste management company employee nearest them of a similar age.
And Swedish small business owners often pay much lower taxes on take-home money than American small business owners.
While I agree that there is less gaps in income distribution in Europe it is nowhere near at the examples you give. I assure you, a PHD here who is making the same as a garbage collector is not trying hard enough or oblivious.
My point was also missed. That is that paid business class and the use of OTA’s in Europe that offer even more discounted premium cabins, are widely available and far more affordable than in the U.S. If I originate in Europe I can often get R/T last minute business class to the U.S. for under $3K. It will be double that on the same flights from the U.S. As such, miles are far more valuable from the U.S From Europe they are much less so. Asia is really inexpensive as well…I often get R/T business class to anywhere in Asia (outside of Japan) for around $2400.00.
Blend in that Europeans are not big credit card users and the entire mileage game is sort of lost here. Only hotel programs seem to have decent popularity as there is no similar gouging of U.S. consumers over others.
Those are no ‘discounted’ fares – if anything, the exUS ones are artificially inflated due to the cartel operating there. Fares from other regions (e.g. N. Africa, India) are much closer to European ones, and I doubt that any airline is run badly enough to have a CASK exceeding a dollar in business class.
The examples I have given are from friends, acquaintances, and stuff I know through my work. There are a few sectors in Scandinavia and the UK that have highly paid jobs, but they’re the exception rather than the rule. In fact, UK government policy has set the minimum wage at 66% of the median! I’m not very familiar with the current job market in Germany and Switzerland, things there might be a bit better for the highly skilled.
In Southern Europe, I know STEM PhDs in academia earning less than the average plumber, and one of my best friends has two law degrees but couldn’t make ends meet as a lawyer and ended up doing some public sector exam to find a job as a customs officer at the local airport (not overseeing crackdowns on smuggling gangs- he mostly works as the guy who stamps the form for tourists to get VAT returns).
The point is that the ‘mass affluent’ aren’t really a thing in many/most parts of Europe – you can have a successful professional career but remain unable to afford things like long-haul family holidays- so the market for expensive airline tickets is much smaller than in other parts of the world where the income distribution curve is more spread out.
The same sectors that have highly paid jobs in the US have relatively highly paid jobs in Scandinavia too. Also, while take-home pay for the employed in such jobs is much lower in Scandinavia than in the US, there is generally no horrible personal student debt burden, no expensive childcare costs, no expensive schooling for kids, no horrible personal medical debt, no perceived need for personal big savings for old age help/care, and no perceived need for big savings for medical care. This means such relatively high income earners in Scandinavia who are making way less than Americans in high paying jobs in the same sector still have quite a bit of disposable income anyway since they don’t see a need to save for expensive education for kids or as big a cushion for potential negative surprises with health, unemployment, retirement and so on.
While most accredits were instantly as short flight with Garuda from Lampung to Jakarta of just 35 minutes and found points on account right after landing in Cgk, had largely issues with Virgin, Vietnam Airlines, Kenya Airways and Tarom, luckily for first three flown end November received points yesterday as total of 14, and now still missing Tarom flown from 06 November, 3 months ago!!!
While not sure if such delay to credit points due to Sas or Skyteam system, is undoubtedly not nice hear about these statistics while many people still awaiting their dream comes true and also consider that Sas should first settled all accredit matters for all participants before releasing prizes, as me ending challenge on 4th December still awaiting for last credit to get my Million and try use it, while other ending challenge after me not only already got their miles but also chance to use them in advance of me and others in my same condition.
Not being able to use the miles seems certain to become a story over time.
+1. I’ve seen reports about this WAY BEFORE the promo started so it was my main reason not to participate in this activity.
This is what I said when Matthew signed up for the challenge. SAS points are close to worthless for long haul flights. As a long time EBG, I’ve noticed how it has gotten even worse after the transfer to SkyTeam. It was good for 1.5 weeks, but then it all disappeared. I know plenty fellow EBG/EBD who sits up at night just to book the minute award seats are released 330 days in advance.
Serious question. Do seats relilably open at the 330-day window, even in premium ecoomy and business? How many per flight?
Sadly not, it’s not a given. Everything varies due to demand and seasons, and especially destinations. HND and BKK are notorious for having basically no award seats. Sometimes you luck out, and sometimes not.
Note that in Scandinavia, especially in Norway we have 2 public holidays (week long) in addition to Christmas, Easter and summer during October and February/march. Trying to find award seats during these holidays is impossible.
While I’ve never flown SAS long haul and would definitely love to try them out to Korea or Japan, I can see decent availability on AFKL, KQ, SV plus the odd flight on Garuda. This definitely isn’t Star Alliance, but there are more than sufficient opportunities to use miles to destinations across Africa as well as most parts of Asia (including the Middle East).
@PM — Yes, partner awards are easier to come by on a regular basis, especially the ones you mentioned. There is a dedicated Scandinavian version of FlyerTalk called insideflyer.no, if you can translate the website, you’ll see a thread where people list their successful bookings. You’ll see it’s almost exclusively the airlines you mentioned
As a “person of the people”, I suffer economy class just fine. And so I assume I’ll be able to use the SAS points for US-Europe-US travel on SAS just fine. Business class mileage ticket space is going to be tougher to count on — but since I mostly book last minute tickets, maybe I’ll land a few transatlantic stragglers in SAS business class.
Some of those people will be very eager to see when/if AF-KL acquires enough of SAS that AF-KL feels it is a good idea to make FlyingBlue into SAS’s program too.
Just for context, I’m a SEN at LH and I’m having about 16 legs a month and about 20% of the legs are not or not correctly credited. The claim via the website is typically being rejected and customer service tickets takes weeks and needs to be pushed to get done.
So the crediting problem is not only with SAS….
The numbers got updated and now there are no North Korean accounts that hit the 1 million points.
Thanks for this article!
Yep- waiting on Vietnam Air here.
All the best-