In October 2024, SAS’s loyalty scheme launched a clever new promotion to celebrate the airline joining Skyteam. I did seriously consider taking part but had a big trip already planned in the middle of it, so sadly would not have had the time.
Once in a while, companies launch a promotion that really captures the imagination of its potential customers, and this one has certainly done that. It is believed that the company thought that they would originally get around 60 people who would manage to fly the full 15 airlines to receive a million points. In fact, 940 people completed the challenge, each receiving one million points each. The highest number of millionaires came from United States (173 millionaires), Japan (149), and South Korea (130), followed by China with 112 millionaires. 42,718 people signed up for the challenge which is an impressive number for a relatively small airline. Participants visited 33 different countries around the world, with every millionaire visiting China.
The promotion offered several levels of bonus depending on how many flights on different airlines you managed to take on Skyteam by 31 December 2024.
- Five different SkyTeam Airlines – 10,000 EuroBonus points
- Ten different SkyTeam Airlines – 100,000 EuroBonus points
- 15 different SkyTeam Airlines – 1 million EuroBonus points
I spoke to two UK-based flyers, Harriet and Miksa who are both based in London, to understand what drew them to the challenge and how they planned their trips. Plus of course, what they plan to spend all those miles on.
Harriet
Before you did the challenge, were you already a frequent flyer?
Yes, I was for both leisure and work. I already had status with BA, so I feel like this came at quite a good time with all the things that are happening with BA. I was traveling a lot anyway, and my partner and I decided to do the challenge. We did some legs together and some legs separately. We both have a lifelong ambition, to go to every country in the world.
Were you already a member of the SAS Eurobonus scheme or did this make you join?
I’d flown SAS before and my dad did as well years and years ago and used to rave about them. I’d actually flown home with them previously from Copenhagen to San Francisco and back and really enjoyed that flight. The crew was lovely, so I feel like I already had a good image of SAS in my mind.
I think running a campaign where you fly 15 different airlines and earn a million points was quite a wacky idea from SAS. It definitely felt like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity because they’re never going to join Sky Team again!
When you both decided you were going to do it, how did you sit down and plan it?
The campaign started on the 4th of October, with the flying window opening on the 8th of October. It was around the 8th or 9th that we started looking at it. Initially, we thought we just didn’t have time before the end of December as we both have full-time jobs. So initially, we thought, well, there’s no way.
Then we sat down and started planning it just by looking at where is a good place to start in terms of an airline or an airport, that’s a great hub for connecting to other places. I think we spent more time planning than we did actually flying just to make sure all the fare codes were correct! It was mostly just where can we go? Where can we get to from here? What makes sense do the flight times align? How can we do this in the number of days that we have with work as well? So my partner, for example, did three overnight flights one after another. Which was just because he had such a such a limited time with work in which to do it. Fortunately, I had hotels for most of mine, but a lot of planning went into it for sure.
Did you have a strict budget you had to keep to?
We’d worked out that a million points was worth roughly £10,000. So we wanted to have at least a 50% return on investment which gave us a £5000 budget. I wasn’t so strict about that as Maxim, but we were both over our 50% return on investment, which was very good. Maxim, my partner, didn’t want to spend any money on hotels if he could help it. On the entire trip, I think he managed not to use hotels except for one or two days.
What routes did you fly and which airlines?
I did 15 airlines. I didn’t do Kenyan because they cancelled my flight. And I didn’t do Argentinian just because it was quite far away. The Kenyan flight I was going to do was the fifth Freedom Route, Guangzhou to Bangkok. I did one trip to America and then on to Mexico. That ticked off a few. Then I did another trip, also by myself, to Asia, which covered countries like China, Vietnam, Korea, Indonesia, and Taiwan. Also, my partner and I did the European ones together just at weekends on various trips to France, Spain, and Amsterdam. We flew to Bucharest for Tarom, and from there, we went to Jeddah to get to Saudi Arabia and then to Dubai. We were then able to fly Virgin Atlantic to London from Dubai
Did you meet any of the other participants during your travels?
I didn’t meet anyone while I was travelling, but one person said that they met about 20 other people on the 5th Freedom Flight. I think it was. It was a Kenyan Airways flight that was going to or from Bangkok. It would have been nice to meet people given there were so many people doing it but alas, not this time.
Where did you go that you haven’t been to before and is there one particular place that you visited that’s stuck in your mind?
Definitely South Korea which I’d never been to before. I used to live in China. So I have quite an affinity with that part of the world. I travelled a lot in Southeast Asia when I was there, but I had not been to South Korea. I also had been to Vietnam and I was able to have quite a long layover there, so it was nice to get out and about in Ho Chi Minh city.
I think and the 3rd place that sticks in my mind is Mexico City because it just completely is completely different from what I expected. It was just it was quite a slow pace. They closed the roads on a Sunday and people would just ride their bikes through the city. There was an amazing cafe culture and really, really good coffee. I just wasn’t certain about what it would be like and I was just completely blown away by this gorgeous city.
So you flew lots of airlines that a lot of people from Europe don’t necessarily fly that often. Was there one that you were particularly surprised by?
Definitely Korean. I feel like Korean is known for having a very good design, especially in economy. There are nice touches like giving you metal cutlery and the bibimbap. Lots of people also rave about the bibimbap. So I definitely recommend Korean to anyone. I saw in quite quick succession how airlines, airports, and countries did things differently, like on Korean Air, they put a sticker on the seat in front of you if you were asleep during the meal service, so you could get a meal later when you woke up. I thought this was a really nice touch in economy!
The flight back from Dubai on Virgin sticks out as on this flight, the crew was so lovely. We even went up to the flight deck at the very end of the flight. I spoke to the pilot and the first officer. They gave us a lot of their time after a long flight/day and were just very happy to chat to us. That was really lovely given that it was the last flight of the whole trip for both of us
In terms of airports then, did you have any airports that you either hated or loved because you obviously went through lots of different ones?
If you include London I travelled through 19 airports. I think Bucharest Airport was probably the lowlight just because there were hardly any charging ports and it’s quite small. There seems to be building work going on in every single corner. It was also quite expensive. We also couldn’t use a lounge because we were getting a domestic flight and they didn’t allow you to use it.
Ho Chi Minh was just so, so busy. I spent about 2 1/2 hours queuing firstly to check in, then to go through Immigration and Security. I even texted my partner to say, if I were you, I’d change your itinerary because he only had an hour and a half. So he changed his itinerary because of my experience there. I suppose I was the Guinea pig. He perhaps wouldn’t have made his flight had he had he not changed. So that was definitely one of the less organised airports.
By contrast, I liked Madrid airport because when the planes take off, they can take off in parallel. You can look out of the window and see another plane next to you, which I quite like a bit like San Francisco.
In Incheon airport as well the lounge there was really lovely. So that’s also another highlight.
Did either of you have anything that went majorly wrong?
All in all, everything was very smooth, and I’m amazed that there were no major hitches.
However, our Kenyan flight was cancelled a couple of weeks in advance. I’d already planned to do 16 airlines, so it was not an issue.
Have you made status with Eurobonus as a result of the flights?
I’m still on silver, but I’m pretty much at gold as is Maxim. He did a status match with Lufthansa I think.
The big question is, will you stick with Eurbonus now? Did what has happened with British Airways Executive Club have any bearing on this?
That is a difficult question. Maxim and I are both trying to get gold on BA now before the changes. He’s something like 100 points away and I’m not much more than that. So we’re we’re trying to get gold for a final year. I think at the moment we’re still trying to keep our options open. It is annoying because, of course, flying BA short haul is great, whereas we don’t often need to be in Copenhagen or Oslo. At the same time, I go to Edinburgh quite a lot to see my family.
I think longer trips definitely will be with SAS with Eurobonus and Skyteam with the odd foray into Star Alliance and with oneworld. I think I’ll probably just have to stick with a BA for Edinburgh, at least.
Some may say the promotion was an extreme way to get the points?
You could argue that the whole euro bonus millionaire trips that we’ve just done have been crazy. I think my parents initially thought this is a bit mad. But then they realised, actually, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And my dad said if he’d been my age, he definitely would have done it.
Did anyone criticise you in terms of the environmental impact of the trips?
I did speak to my parents about this. We said that when I’ve flown previously, they fly maybe once every two years; my grand never flies, and my brother never flies. So I’m kind of taking the load for them. I guess that’s one way of looking at it, but I think a more proactive thing that I’m going to do is plant some trees and pay for the carbon absorption.
The biggest question of course is what are you going to do with your million miles, especially with both of you having a million miles, that’s a huge amount. Did you agree on what to do with them?
We’re still thinking about how to spend them as we would like to go to every single country in the world. So personally I’d like to use it to go to some places that we haven’t seen before. Perhaps somewhere like Kigali or Kilimanjaro on KLM, they have some really good routes to Africa, and I’ve never been to Africa. Maxim has been to Kenya and he loved it. I think also heading back out to Asia which we’re planning on for June. There are some KLM fifth freedoms as well out there, and hopefully, we can get those little Dutch houses filled with gin!
I’d like to see lots of different places in quite a short amount of time just to get a sense of a place and then decide if we want to come back for a longer period of time. Maxim is probably more likely to do it a bit more intensely than me, as in, oh, let’s just squeeze in one more country and take an overnight flight but I would probably rather avoid the overnight flights. We’re both pretty interested in the same things. So, like bird watching, we’re going to hopefully go to Asia in June to see some cool birds in Sumatra.
Are you quite organised as a traveller? Are you at the airport three hours before and at the gate super early?
Sometimes I think, oh, it’s just a domestic flight. I can get there 20 minutes before, and so far, that’s been totally fine. But for other flights I do like to be there super early, especially if there’s a nice lounge, then I’ll get there as early as I can.
Maxim’s pretty organised as well, with things like looking at visas. He decided to get the visa waiver and not the transit visa for Saudi Arabia. And that was a really, really good decision because it meant that when we had to get a bus transit between two terminals, we were able to do that, which we wouldn’t have been able to do on the transit visa. So although we paid something like $30 more, it was so worth doing because that could have been the difference between us making or missing the flight. The devil is in the details for these kinds of things with fare codes as well.
What tips have you picked up doing so many flights in, in quite such a short time with so many different airlines. Is there anything you’d say that you’ve learned as a result?
Yeah, I think I’ve learned to be quite stoic about it in the sense that if a flight’s cancelled or delayed, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not the end of the world.
Another thing is drinking water. Until this trip I’d kind of neglected drinking water on long haul flights and wondered why I felt terrible. Whereas for these flights, I took a metal bottle of water with me and just refilled it wherever I could, and I drank it because it was there. So that’s a big, big learning for me.
I’m also a chronic overpacker. I have one rucksack, but even then, I’ve still got one more pair of trousers than I need, or I bring two chargers when I should just bring one. I already do pack as light as I can. However, collecting luggage hold luggage was just not an option for any of these trips. I think now I can probably just leave the second pair of trousers and the second charger at home!
Miksa
How did you become part of the Eurobonus promotion? Were you a frequent flyer before?
I have always been quite a frequent traveller. I grew up living abroad. Because of my parents work I was very frequently flying long haul, probably two or three times a year. From an early age I was quite interested in frequent flyer programmes. I found them to be a very interesting way to travel, with opportunities to maximise the travelling, I was already doing. I was also writing a small travel blog about my experiences.
I was not a member of Eurobonus before this promotion, so I joined after seeing it advertised on one of the travel blogs I read regularly. And then took it from there. So, this is the first time I’ve completed a promotion for the sake of earning miles with the frequent flyer program. But I had previously done things like buying a large sum of miles in order to use them at a later date. The concept already appealed to me from the get-go. In addition to that, I still travel frequently. Two or three times a year on, long haul, and then several times throughout the year both to visit friends, family and for the sake of travel.
It appealed to me as an exciting promotion opportunity and one that I thought was unique. I’d never seen a promotion that was quite so lucrative or quite so appealing from the perspective of the average traveller. And in addition to that, it also worked with the travel I was already planning on doing for the remainder of the year.
When you saw the promotion, did you straight away say I’m going to go for the million points, or were you a bit unsure if you could actually manage that in the time that was allowed?
I did not say I’m definitely going to go for it. It was appealing at first, but of course, with a work schedule and with a life schedule, it’s hard to justify taking out several weeks or whatever it would take to fly for the sake of flying. What I did first is I immediately registered for it just out of interest to make sure I didn’t miss out. Once I thought through my travel plans for the rest of the year, I realised I’m probably going to hit at least 5-6 of the flights without trying too much. Then I slowly took it from there and realised the most lucrative option is to go all the way. It didn’t really make much sense to do it halfway.
So planning for it was quite a task because there’s 15 airlines you have to go on to get the full bonus and there’s a real geographic spread between those airlines. How did you go about planning the trips?
That’s the fun part, right? The travel itself was also fun. It enabled me to visit places I otherwise would not have visited, but planning it was a struggle to some extent. I anchored it around a couple of places I was going anyway. So, for example, I was going to visit some friends in Hong Kong, regardless of the promotion. I built several of the legs on the airlines based in Asia, around already visiting Hong Kong. In addition to that, I was flying to the US, so I built some of it around that, and then flying home to Hungary for Christmas, so I built the European flights around that. I took three disparate trips and then tried to anchor the remaining remainder of the flying around them.
And did you try and minimise the amount of time in each place so that you could fit it all in? Was that a time a constraint?
Yes, definitely, I think as someone who has a full time job, there’s a limited number of holiday days I was willing to sink into this. So, especially for Asia where I took nine of the airlines I tried to do that all within a relatively limited amount of time. I spent five days visiting friends in Hong Kong and then another 5 days for the promotion. I was hopping around taking flights for the sake of earning the bonus while also stopping over in cities that appeal to me. Either I had been before, or it sounded like a nice layover, so that’s kind of how I approached planning it.
Did you perform calculations to determine the value of the miles and then plan your budget accordingly to ensure that you achieved a profit and did not spend more than the value of the miles?
I tried to sort of come up with an approximation of what I thought the everyday value of those miles would be. Once I created a Eurobonus account, I was able to see how far they went. I was able to see the availability on routes that I would have wanted to use the miles on and I came to sort of a rough ballpark in my mind. I decided what my maximum budget would be before I embarked on any of it. I planned out every single flight I would have to take and how much it would cost me, including hotels, and then would decide whether to pull the trigger or not to pull the trigger. Although throughout I also I tried really hard to keep it to as low budget as possible. So in some instances, I was taking connecting flights that added on to the travel time a little bit in order to sort of cut down on money. For example, one of the airlines I flew, Vietnam Airlines, I only flew them domestically because their international flights were expensive, and then I positioned them in Vietnam on a budget carrier.
Did you have any disasters where things were cancelled or delayed ?
I had one that comes to mind. It’s actually very impressive, all things considered, that throughout the entire trip I had one delay that caused issues. Even the flights in the run up to the week before the Christmas holidays, flying throughout Europe, not a single flight was delayed or cancelled, which I found to be very impressive. So the one that was delayed was from Hong Kong to Taiwan to Korea, and the first flight of the day, the one to Taiwan was delayed by two hours or so. Then for whatever reason, I wasn’t able to check in online for the next flight. So, by the time I got to the airport, the check-in window had closed for the next flight. And because I was on such a tight timeline, I essentially had to find any way to get to Korea that day. I ended up taking a two hour high speed rail to another city within Taiwan to catch the last flight of the day from there to Korea. So it was very last minute, and fortunately, I had some good Amex insurance come in handy at that point in time. Otherwise I would have probably been out of pocket quite a bit. I was able to recover fairly decently, although it was quite stressful to have to cross a foreign country with no preparation whatsoever.
You experienced some new places and new airlines and new airports. What were the best experiences in terms of those things?
I mean, my favourite experience was visiting friends in Hong Kong, which I, of course, enjoy doing. Other than that, my favourite layover was probably in Bali. I think that’s as nice a destination as you can pick for a layover. It’s quite convenient that the airport is quite close to a lot of nice hotels, so it was easy to sort of spend a day and a half just lying on the beach in between flights.
My favourite airline? Well, because I was flying economy, I have to say that of the airlines I flew the standout ones were definitely the Asian ones in general. Especially Korean which was high quality. I also have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by, for example, Delta. I think is a very strong carrier in economy as well, same with United. I think flying them is a bit more of a pleasant experience than flying BA in economy or other European carriers.
In terms of airport, they kind of blended together after a certain point in time. But I think that probably my favourite airport in the world is Istanbul. It’s incredible and what stands out to you is the fact that it’s one huge building. So everywhere you look, it feels like you’re inside like a huge cavern, basically. I know a lot of large airports in the world have more individual spaces. It just felt. It’s a really large yet manageable and a relatively easy connection as well. So I highly rate it.
Did you meet any other people doing the same? Because I gather quite a few people did end up on the same flight.
Yeah, I think everyone who took that fifth freedom flight met someone on that flight. It’s a thrice weekly Kenya Airways flight between Bangkok and Guangzhou and unless you’re planning on flying to Kenya, which is kind of out of the way, you had to take that flight. On both ways there was a large number of people taking that flight just for the sake of of completing the challenge. So when I was waiting at Bangkok Airport, I did end up meeting a dozen or so other people taking that same flight. We kind of ran the numbers on it too, because if there are three flights a week in each direction over the course of the two months, that people had to complete the challenge I would expect a good number had to funnel through there at some point. So your odds of meeting someone were very high.
It gave me some reassurance that I’m not the only one crazy enough to do it!
And in terms of the airlines, which ones did you not fly?
The two I avoided were Aeromexico and the Argentinian one just because they were out of out of the way for me.
Has it changed how you would travel in the future and do you have any tips for people based on what you experienced?
I can’t understate the value of good planning, so when taking a more complicated itinerary on multiple airlines on multiple tickets, it always pays to build in a few extra hours. I think if you’re able to afford a credit card that comes with lounge membership, like Priority Pass or something similar, that’s great value in your travel experience. When you have a longer layover, it just makes sense to be able to go work somewhere. So I actually found that, like, while I was traveling, I was able to still remain somewhat productive. The other thing I was pleasantly surprised by is in a number of places, I ended up staying in the airport in a capsule hotel, and I overwhelmingly had positive experiences from that. They were far cheaper than an airport hotel would be, and in most cases, because they’re inside the terminal, it’s extremely convenient. So if you have a few hours to rest consider a capsule hotel versus exiting the airport, going to your hotel coming back where you just end up losing sleep.
The million “point” question, what are you going to do with them? Have you kind of looked at ways to maximise it? Did you always have a plan of what you wanted to do with them or was it just a question now seeing what you can get on availability?
It’s a combination of all of the above. I had already earmarked the fact that I really enjoyed flying SAS and I’ve read very good things about their business class, so I would like to at some point try them in flying to maybe Thailand or to Korea or Japan on a nice long flight.
Equally, I think there’s a lot of value in using them in cases where I would fly anyway, but I wouldn’t necessarily want to fly economy. So that’s my plan to hopefully use them on long-haul flights to upgrade. I don’t really have any specific plans necessarily, or I haven’t booked anything with them yet, but I’m looking at planning for next fall. My hope is they don’t devalue now that they suddenly have 900 million extra miles in circulation!
So did you end up with status as a result of all the flying? Did you get status within Eurobonus?
Actually, funnily enough, despite flying 60,000 km and taking over 20 flights on Sky Team, I made it halfway to status. I think it goes to show that economy flying is really undervalued. I personally think it is sort of a counterintuitive perspective in the sense that people who are flying business as part of their work likely can’t choose which airline they fly. So your loyalty is more, more fungible. You’re not loyal necessarily, whereas as someone who flies economy, if I have status with an airline, I will probably go out of my way to fly them, even if it costs a bit more in order to access, you know, extra luggage or whatever it might be. However, I did get gifted Gold for participating in some interviews to promote the scheme.
So does that encourage you as you were saying, to fly with Sky Team because you have that status and obviously you’ll get the lounge etc if you go in economy?
Oh, definitely especially because I genuinely had a good experience with it. As someone who usually just thinks about the cheapest flight, I would probably go out of my way to do that. Within Europe, it doesn’t really matter that much, but when flying to the US or Asia, I would go out of my way now. So they did win. My loyalty, to some extent, was from the 1,000,000 miles or from the free status.
It was nice that when I was interviewed for it for SAS, I met the airline’s chief marketing officer, and he talked through the logic. I thought it was extraordinarily unique for an airline to do something like this. I guess it made complete sense, considering they had just joined SkyTeam. I think it raises some questions as to what the point of a loyalty program is, whether it’s to acquire new customers or retain old ones. But, like I said, I didn’t even have an account before this. So, I guess they managed to bring me into the fold to some extent. I’m sure many others probably feel the same way. So I read it as a very, very good experience, a little bit of a once-in-a-lifetime sort of thing. I would not necessarily do it again. Maybe once I’ve gone through the million, then maybe!
I came away feeling quite positive about SkyTeam and SAS, so it’s quite good from their perspective.
