I’m moving forward with the SAS EuroBonus Million Mile Challenge and taking my son along. Here’s how I planned it, booked it, and the prices I paid for each ticket.
Planning And Booking My SAS EuroBonus Million Mile Challenge
When I originally decided I was taking part in this challenge and taking my 8-year-old son Augustine, I had hoped to spend a day in each city…what fun to visit cities like London, Madrid, Bucharest, Copenhagen, Paris, Amsterdam, Jeddah, Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City, Tapei, and Seoul (to name a few…).
But I have a full-time profession beyond this blog and my son is in school. So it quickly became clear that I was going to have to accelerate the trip or not take it all.
While I’m a bit concerned about the inflationary effects of hundreds of million mile deposits in SAS EuroBonus (or maybe thousands – it seems many are participating in this challenge), I’m still hopeful it will fund a lot of travel between the USA and Europe on SAS metal (partner redemptions with EuroBonus are far less attractive).
How I Planned And Booked The Trip
While I did glance at FlyerTalk and other blogs for some route inspiration, I sat down one recent evening at about 8:00 pm to plan out the trip my…and did not stop until 3:30 am when everything was booked.
That’s the way I used to write term papers (and not the night before they were due…)—better to sit down in one setting and get it done than do little bits and pieces. Unlike a term paper or other school assignment, airline ticket prices fluctuate greatly and so I did not want to return the following evening and find that pricing and availability had changed.
Some flew south, some flew west, but I decided to fly east first from Los Angeles…to New York to catch a cheap Virgin Atlantic fare. Delta had rather pricey tickets from LAX-JFK and they booked into basic economy (E), which are not eligible to earn miles with SAS EuroBonus.
Thus, I decided to take JetBlue to New York (excellent legroom, free wi-fi) and start the challenge from JFK.
Virgin Atlantic offers one-way fares from New York as cheap as $198 to compete with Norse Atlantic. Our tickets were $242 each and while I was tempted to book the daytime service to London, I booked an evening flight in order to fly the Airbus A330-900neo, the only Virgin Atlantic fleet I have not flown.
From there, it became a race. I have only a week to be home for Thanksgiving so I had to kick my search into overdrive.
I used Google Flights (entering continents for destinations to find the cheapest fares) to string together a series of tickets on SAS, Air Europa, Tarom, and Air France.
We’ll fly on a cheap SAS ticket from London to Malaga via Copenhagen, then immediately connect on Air Europe to Madrid. From Madrid, we will fly to Bucharest on Tarom.
It wasn’t perfect (and a couple of extra nights would have made it so much more efficient and relaxing), but the only scheduling limitation that made me book beyond SkyTeam was arriving in Bucharest at around 5:15 pm and needing to be in Paris the following morning for a 7:25 am flight.
There are no evening flights from Bucharest to Paris, even on budget carriers. There’s a KLM connection that would have been perfect had we arrived just an hour earlier into Bucharest, but I was forced to book a one-way ticket on LOT Polish from Bucharest to Paris via Warsaw…not a big deal, but it will mark the only flight that does not directly help us complete the challenge.
From Paris we will fly to Tunis on Air France, where I booked a cheap business class fare on Saudia to Kuala Lumpur via Jeddah. We’ll have an 8.5-hour layover in Jeddah, but I will use that time to work, just like I will during all of our extended layovers.
From KL, we will catch a KLM “Fifth Freedom” flight to Jakarta, my tightest connection of the trip (only 1 hour, 20 minutes). Let’s hope that Saudia flight is on time!
Then we’ll fly Xiamen to Taipei via Xiamen. The economy class ticket was only $178, but it booked in a mileage non-earning class. I kept bumping up the fare class and by the time I reached a fare that earned SAS EuroBonus miles, the ticket was $382. So instead I booked a business class ticket for $525. Sadly, I won’t get to experience Xiamen’s 787 Dreamliner, but even a comfier seat on the 737-800 that will take us overnight from Jakarta to Xiamen was worth the modest splurge.
From Tapei, we will fly to Ho Chi Minh City on China Airlines and finally rest for a night. I had wanted to spend a couple of nights here, but I also wanted to be home for Thanksgiving and not be away from my wife and daughter longer than necessary.
Thus, after just a night in SGN, we’ll fly to Singapore on Vietnam Airlines, connect back to Jakarta on Garuda Indonesia, and then fly to Shanghai on China Eastern. From Shanghai, we will fly home to LAX on Korean Airlines via Seoul.
My Final Routing
Here’s a look at my final routing and the price I paid for each tickets.
While many have done this for better than $3500, I think the price is not bad considering how efficient we are traveling and that it will partially be in business class. I do plan to upgrade the KLM flight to business class in KUL if I can get the usual 100 EUR upgrade fee (beforehand, the price is $250 each, which is not worthwhile for the two-hour flight).
Feel free to let me know how I could have done better! 😉
I know many used AA miles to travel within the Middle East or from the Middle East to East Asia, but I wanted to stick to SkyTeam where I could. That said, those particular AA awards in business class are true sweet spots (long overdue for a devaluation) and if I had more time I would have taken Augustine to several more destinations in the region.
If you’re counting, this is 13 airlines…that leaves two to complete the challenge. We will do a quick trip to Mexico outbound on AeroMexico, returning on Delta next month.
| DAY | AIRLINE | ROUTE | CABIN | COST (USD) |
| 0 | JetBlue | LAX-JFK | Y | 189 |
| 1 | Virgin Atlantic | JFK-LHR | Y | 242 |
| 2 | SAS | LHR-CPH-AGP | Y | 129 |
| 2 | Air Europa | AGP-MAD | Y | 97 |
| 3 | Tarom | MAD-OTP | Y | 125 |
| 3 | LOT Polish | OTP-WAW-CDG | Y | 188 |
| 4 | Air France | CDG-TUN | Y | 199 |
| 4 | Saudia | TUN-JED-KUL | J | 700 |
| 5 | KLM | KUL-CGK | Y | 66 |
| 5 | Xiamen | CGK-XMN-TPE | J | 525 |
| 6 | China Airlines | TPE-SGN | Y | 150 |
| 7 | Vietnam Airlines | SGN-SIN | Y | 212 |
| 7 | Garuda Indoneisa | SIN-CGK | Y | 152 |
| 7 | China Eastern | CGK-PVG | Y | 178 |
| 8 | Korean Air | PVG-ICN-LAX | Y | 400 |
| TOTAL | 3552 |
Where I Booked My Tickets
I booked every single ticket except the Korean Airlines ticket on Orbitz.
Why Orbitz? The biggest challenge beyond scheduling these flights was ensuring that every ticket was booked into a fare class that earned miles. I appreciate that Orbitz clearly shows the fares class and has a 24-hour courtesy cancellation for all tickets, even with carriers that do not otherwise provide one.
While phone support is not ideal should I run into issues during the trip and have to make changes, I find the Orbitz website very easy and appreciate the fare class transparency and easy cancellations.
I booked the last segment directly with Korean because it was half the price of any online travel agency (perhaps because it originated in Mainland China?).
I applied for a Vietnam e-visa five days ago and still have not received it…I hope it comes through (Augustine has a German passport so he does not require one).
CONCLUSION
I’m booked and ready to go on the SAS Million Mile SkyTeam challenge! The route planning was fun…it reminded me of how much I still love to fly for the sake of flying.
My intention was to visit Egypt and hopefully score a cheap fare out of Cairo, but I found a much better fare out of Tunis instead. Overall, I think the routing and price came together nicely considering I only booked a week in advance.
Yes, I’m a little apprehensive it may be a bit much, especially for Augustine, but the only way we are going to know is if we try.
Stay tuned: I’ll be live blogging the trip this week.
I got tired and had anxiety by just reading the post above. Good luck with your adventure.
You’re brave to try this and I suspect you will have some substantial regrets during the madcap trip but ultimately I believe that this will be an adventure that you will remember fondly in later years.
Love it. The misadventures, if you have any, will be the best part. This is weeks of content and 2M miles to boot! Safe travels, Matthew!
I hope you added the EBB123456789 frequent flyer number into the airline booking at the time of booking. But even if you did, you should double check that it’s there and correctly there even at check-in and even after you get the boarding pass. Also, better to do this on a private browser on a computer where you aren’t logged into any accounts than to do so via airline apps where you have ever logged in with the airline app.
Air Europa was a huge struggle. We will see if the flight credits, but it keeps falling out of the reservation (even though I go back in and add it).
Oh the stories I can tell of what I’ve gone through to get the EBX number to stick to the booking and how it shows or doesn’t show. 😀
I have the bonus of the involved accounts for my side having EBG/EBD status so sometimes a clue that something may not have gone right is the absence of SkyPriority on the boarding pass. Otherwise I would probably need to enter the missing mileage credit dystopia even more.
Wow! You guys have got this. Will look for the updates.
Somewhere a retarted girl in Stockholm is shedding a few tears over this needless flying.
But the rest of us love that you are doing this just because you can. It’s why we work hard and make the tough decisions in life, just to say F U to those who can’t.
Have a great trip you and your son will be able to talk about forever.
You just can’t say anything nice without insulting someone. Now you’re attacking young girls. Classy.
That grifting ‘tard is 21 now, she’s an adult and fair game, even with the IQ of a potato. Making yourself a public figure comes with the public critique.
Grow up!
I thought it was damn funny. I suspect many others did too. That little twit doesn’t deserve our respect.
If you really believe that Swedish person has a mental deficiency from birth, then you should really look in the mirror to see who is the more messed up person: the Swedish woman you love to bash or the so-called man in the mirror whom you see in your mirror at home.
After many years of Lord Trump worshippers and his assorted gang of fellow travelers saying Sweden has “flying shame”, they still don’t get it that”flying shame” didn’t really register. What does register in the country is wanting a clean environment, healthy air and not wanting to run up the bills.
Another elite liberal that thinks he’s better than others. Sorry to inform you but you aren’t important to the business world. Perhaps you should look in the mirror and ask yourself why you hate others so much that have less than you. And why you think your beliefs are best for them, and why you think they never could be as successful as you without handouts.
Elite liberal? I thought your lord Trump was a fan of the privileged elite and a fan of having a liberal allowance to abuse those he considers to be losers for not being privileged elites.
Don’t bother. Dude is too chickenhearted to use one name in the comments and certainly not his own. That means troll, pure and simple with the stupidity and petulance that comes with his pathetic troll comments.
Charge that iPad! 8hrs in Jeddah could be brutal.
Can you have thanksgiving lunch on the Sunday instead? May make the trip far more enjoyable having 12-24 hours by a pool in a hotel here and there. Pool time seems to be the best cure for jet lag with kids that I’ve found.
What do you value the 2m miles at?
Will be crazy but it’s a great story. I was very close to attempting with my son. Tried to sell it to my wife as “well accrue 30-40 biz class flights to Asia”.
Safe Travels. Cannot wait to read you updates.
It will almost certainly be too much for Augustine LOL
For Vietnam if you’re worried, pay for a “letter of invitation” which will allow you to board your flight and get a Visa on arrival (bring USD cash for that & prepare to wait 1-2 hrs in SGN). This is what I had to do my first visit when I foolishly budgeted a week to get mine just ahead of the Reunification Day 4/30 celebrations
Best of luck w/ no delays!
In 2022 I booked flights from Dubai to HCM two days prior. I used a visa service and I think it cost $100 per visa to get it done the same day.
So for some of these segments in Asia where you are economy, will you try to get an upgrade to business class if it is reasonable in price? Reviews for some of these carriers are a bit less common (Garuda and China Eastern). Good luck on your trip around the world.
Some of these SkyTeam airlines in East Asia do sell upgrades to business class for relatively low prices. But then I would have a concern with what happens to the booking class.
One SkyTeam airline recently rebooked me due to a schedule change and the inventory into which they rebooked me was going to massively reduce my mileage accrual even as it was going to be the same cabin for 2 of the 3 flights,
Really don’t want to be a party pooper here, but booking Eurobonus awards on anything other than domestic and intra Europe/Scandinavia is basically impossible.
I know of fellow Norwegians staying up till 00:00 AM just to be able to book that biz award 330 days in advance. Space is hard to come by, especially to Bangkok and Tokyo.
I quite like the sound of 105k partner returns to Africa, hoping there’ll be sufficient availability on AF and KQ to take advantage of them.
Agreed. As a very frequent SK flyer (wife and I both have Eurobonus Diamond) with millions of EB points, I honestly think that >95% of redemption possibilites have been erased since SAS switched alliances. It was never an issue finding and booking long-haul awards in business class with *A – it’s now next to impossible with ST.
I’m going to go out on a very short limb and predict that even if things go wrong, that even if Augustine hits travel overload at some point in the trip once this is over and when he’s older it will become one of the memories you both treasure the most.
Bravo Zulu and Good luck!
I dont want to be a kill joy, but it can be hard to redeem those points even on SAS metal, unless domestic or intra Europe/scandinavia. I know guys who stay up till 00:00 just to book the space when it opens 330 days in advance.
Anyway, I look forward to see this play out and if everything goes smoothly.
I’m hoping we will not have horrible luck. We will see.
Glad to read the new Miss Universe inspired you to use SAS extensively for future travel.
The future lawyer from Denmark became Miss Universe only after LALF had already decided to do this SAS promotion.
It’s too bad that it is a race and not a vacation. I have been on business trips where I stopped at a tourist site for 3 minutes, which is better than nothing .
Planning this trip is like a PhD thesis on booking travel! 10 days ago, I applied for a Vietnam visa and it came through on day 5 so I hope that yours is in your hands now.
Still nothing for me.
You can pay for two invitation letters to become visa on arrival eligible.
Some of my folks will be flying to Phu Quoc which is entirely visa free for Americans, and then you can do a same-day transit via air from Phu Quoc out of the country via VN’s hubs.
This is for Augustine – Your dad is a Master Airline/Aircraft Planner but you already know this!
“Live and Let’s Fly” Matthew and Augustine. You got this!
Quick question, the challenge requires 15 different Skyteam airlines, but I only count 13 on your trip. Assuming you have a DL segment out there somewhere. What you going to do for the 15th?
@D.A., you must’ve missed this (it’s a long post, so it’s understandable): “If you’re counting, this is 13 airlines…that leaves two to complete the challenge. We will do a quick trip to Mexico outbound on AeroMexico, returning on Delta next month.”
I’m just glad that I’m not on this trip. Sounds way too stressful in terms of planning and traveling. Glad that Matthew (and Augustine) are doing it instead. :-p
Curious to see how this goes. because my son has been bugging me to let him join me on one of my 5-day RTW junkets.
One word of advice – familiarize yourself thoroughly with the entry rules when entering a country with a minor where both parents are not present. You don’t want to get turned around somewhere because an immigration officer or check-in agent tells you that you need a notarized letter from Heidi authorizing you to travel with Augustine and you don’t have it.
You bring up an important point for those that have not traveled solo with their children. ( my sense is Matthew is aware).. Travel with your kids in various stages of adoption too is very complicated and something to prepare for well in advance. You give a good reminder.
Most North American, European and Asian countries of relevance to this promotion have no requirement for those easily faked authorization letters from the absent parent of foreign visiting American children traveling with the other custodial American parent. If avoiding Canada, it shouldn’t even come up with doing this promo.
“From Jeddah, we will catch a KLM “Fifth Freedom” flight to Jakarta”
There is a typo, you will catch it from Kuala Lumpur, not from Jeddah.
If you cannot transit airside in KL you will not make it. Immigration is super slow, even the fast track on arrival has taken me several times > 1 hour. Departure immigration is not all that fast either.
Transiting in CGK is a drama, but going twice through immigration if needed is extremely fast.
Thankfully, I do just fine in economy class and don’t need to fly on peak Scandinavian herd dates to places popular with the Scandinavian heard. Otherwise I wouldn’t be as interested in this promotion.
Matthew, there have been rolling problems with visas for Vietnam to the extent that a scam was suspected, Check yours matches the passport precisely ( at least your connection is overnight).
Many nationalities can use e-gates at KUL now, and this has made it loads quicker. Tunis airport can be terrible on a bad day. They also have strict currency regulations. I think it’s if you have the equivalent of 5000 dinar (about USD1500) or more in cash and don’t declare it, you risk having it confiscated.
I’m starting mine on Thursday, need to check the bookings to ensure the SAS number is still there. Also haven’t managed to add it to the Xiamen reservation.
My priority was to avoid long flights in Y, so I’m also flying to Asia from TUN (feel free to email me if you happen to be departing from there this Monday). I have only flown transpacific once and it screwed my system up despite the flat seat involved, so I wasn’t going to try it in economy.
Consequently I decided to do it as a circle Asia trip and return from BOM on Virgin Atlantic who sell decent one-way fares from there to the USA. I actually found some attractive premium economy prices and was going to apply an upgrade voucher in order to fly in business, but the availability wasn’t there on my dates so I bought a Y ticket to BOS and upgraded to W (incidentally, the charges were a lot lower than what they’d charge me if I had only been flying BOM-LHR). As a result, my itinerary only includes only one Y flight longer than 4 hours or so (namely PVG-DPS, six hours something), and that’s not overnight.
The next problem was flying from China to India – there are zero direct flights between the two countries, and the only viable Skyteam option was Korean which involved a pretty long Y sector that also was pricey.
As a result, I rejigged the bits around SE Asia and, instead of hopping around BKK/KUL/CAN/SIN/CGK, I thought I’d try BKK-HAN-CAN on VN and then return straight back to BKK on the Kenya Airways fifth freedom route*. After BKK I’m going to TPE, then on Xiamen Air to ICN, taking the train to GMP and on the half-hour KE flight to Busan, then the following day China Eastern to Bali via PVG. DPS to BOM is also quite far, so I decided to get a Garuda flight to SIN, splashing out on a night in a good hotel and an AI redemption (six hours in a flat seat, ex Vistara plane) to bridge the gap. The AI flight timing is ideal for someone who’s not into India as it leaves me with 3.5 hours until my VS departure.
I don’t need a Vietnam visa, but I did have to get ones for India (visa-free transfers technically aren’t permitted on separate tickets, you might get away with it but there’s no reason to risk it) and Indonesia. Then I realised that the itinerary that I had booked from BKK onwards depended on catching the Saudia flight from Riyadh, necessitating a double connection including entering the Kingdom That Describes Itself As Great. Apparently you can get a free transit visa through the Saudia website, but it wasn’t set up for offering it in conjunction with a double connection, so I thought I would get it separately. Went through the paperwork and the Saudi Ministry wanted a cool $249 to let me in, so I started looking into changing my VN/KQ flights, but KQ don’t fly every day so it started becoming really messy. I finally discovered that there’s a pilot electronic visa waiver which is only available to UK citizens. It wasn’t very well described etc, but it definitely existed and I ended up grabbing it for something like $40.
The other interesting tidbit is that XiamenAir offer a free hotel in their hometown for overnight connections, however they expect you to share a room if you’re flying in Y without status.
*There’s a slight risk with this plan as the airline might not like the idea of me going from Thailand to China in order to return back to BKK, so I might buy a flexible/throwaway ticket to somewhere else for peace of mind.
Matt, this guy has already completed the trip. It’s in Chinese though but you get the idea by looking at the list.
https://www.uscardforum.com/t/topic/320055
While I have issues with the multitude of preservatives/chemicals in processed food as well (a topic for another day perhaps), my issue here isn’t so much with that. One processed meal isn’t going to break the bank after all. It’s the challenge of actually making a burger taste decent when reheated in one of those convection ovens. I find all too often that either the bun gets soggy, the bun gets burned, or the patty itself takes on a burned flavor because of incorrect temperatures used. Nevertheless, I’ll gave DL props for creativity with the partnership and yes, I’ll try it if I find myself in DL F.
BTW, not sure if they’ll offer this on TPE-SGN, but CI had a “Wagyu beef” cheeseburger as a midflight snack when I was flying TPE-AMS the other day that was…really, really good. Highly recommended if it’s an option for you.
Sorry, comment posted on the wrong article – please delete if you are able.
Matt, How is it your son has a German passport and you don’t?
My wife is German, my kids have both passports, but I am not eligible for one until I live in Germany for 7 consecutive years, which we have not done (yet). I can legally work in Germany with the equivalent of a Green Card, but my legal career and Heidi’s nursing career means we’ll be sticking around the USA for the time being.