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Confusion over SAS’s crazy ‘one million bonus miles’ promotion as criteria tweaked

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On Thursday we covered a slightly bonkers promotion launched by Scandinavian airline SAS to promote its move from Star Alliance to SkyTeam.

If you flew 15 different SkyTeam airlines by the end of the year, you would receive 1 million SAS EuroBonus points. These would be worth £10,000 if you value the points at 1p each when used for premium cabin flight redemptions.

I have seen itineries where the whole thing can be done for under £2,500 of flights. Look at the comments to our Thursday article for an example. Don’t forget that you’d also earn standard points for your flights too – the bonus is an extra on top.

However, a snag has appeared.

EDIT, 5pm: SAS has now updated its website again, so I have rewritten this article to reflect the current position

SAS EuroBonus millionaire

As we said on Thursday, SAS only recognises 17 SkyTeam carriers. For some reason, it excludes ITA Airways (annoying as a short haul carrier) and Middle East Airlines (based in Beirut, so not really an option). Czech Airlines, which is about to shut down, is also not featured.

To earn the 1 million bonus points it said that you needed to fly on 15 of the following 17 airlines:

  • Aerolíneas Argentinas
  • AeroMexico
  • Air Europa
  • 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
SAS EuroBonus points millionaire

SAS has now updated its website to reflect two things were already known but not properly reflected. Take a look here.

  • You cannot currently have points credit from Air Europa and Aerolineas Argentinas – retroclaiming will be available later, but not until 2025 in the case of Aerolineas – which would be too late for it to count
  • You cannot currently redeem EuroBonus points for Air Europa or Aerolineas Argentinas flights, so the only way of taking a qualifying flight with those carriers is for cash

I spoke with SAS to get some clarification.

This is what they said:

Earn on the two mentioned partners is not fully technically implemented. On Air Europa, earn/burn will be technically implemented later this month [October]. Flights flown before the technical implementation date will give EuroBonus-points and count for the challenge if retro credited through SAS website. Earn on Aerolineas Argentinas is planned to be technically implemented in December, so might not be implemented in time to count towards the millionaire campaign. We will look into how to clarify this info on the partner pages.

So ….

It looks like Air Europa will count if you fly on a cash ticket. However, if you fly during October, you will need to keep your boarding pass and ticket number so you can retroclaim the flight later.

Aerolineas Argentinas is, it appears, not valid for the promotion. Whilst you will be able to retroclaim cash flights taken from 1st September, this won’t be possible until after the deadline for the millionaire promotion.

This isn’t a total disaster since Aerolineas is the one carrier that most UK-based readers would skip because it isn’t well connected to the rest of the SkyTeam network.

You can learn more about the 1 million points promotion on the SAS website here.

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Category

SkyTeam alliance partners

Comments (66)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Colin MacKinnon says:
    11 Oct11 October 10:54

    Rob, they should pay you to “fact check” their promotions!

    • Skywalker says:
      11 Oct11 October 11:08

      +1 – for example @Rob is owed a lot of money/Avios from BA for their incompetent implementation of the BAEC changes and HfP’s excellent work clarifying it all!

      • Rob says:
        11 Oct11 October 11:26

        Hmmmm …. BA is just 1.6% of our income year to date. Other 98.4% is from elsewhere!

      • GUWonder says:
        11 Oct11 October 12:14

        Rob/Raffles was the best thing to ever happen to the BA forum on FlyerTalk. I owe him a small fortune for my own travel fortunes over the years and it’s been great seeing the success of headforpoints as it still provides a lot of travel gold.

    • GUWonder says:
      11 Oct11 October 11:48

      Thanks for getting this info and getting it out here.

      I am pursuing the SAS million mile promo as I was already going to hit at least 8 or 9 of the SkyTeam carriers and have SAS status, so all info on what works and doesn’t work is very useful. I have also begun drafting some others to do this along with me at my expense. I will make a lot of use of the 1 million SAS points for SAS flights. For those who are eligible for 2-for-1 award redemptions with SAS due to SAS credit cards in some parts of the Nordics, this is an even more lucrative program than it is for most of the rest of us.

  • can2 says:
    11 Oct11 October 11:16

    Very good journalism!

  • MC says:
    11 Oct11 October 11:23

    This doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the promotion!!!

    Would you even trust SAS to honour valid flights when they’re still looking to “clarify this info” in a promotion they’ve already launched?

  • Lady London says:
    11 Oct11 October 11:23

    Interestingly, reported elsewhere that Skyteam has aligned with 2 rail groups.

    I’ll be keeping an eye out for oppotunities that may be thrown up by this over time if there is any true level of integration not just branding

  • Rob says:
    11 Oct11 October 11:45

    FYI …. we are talking to a reader who is looking seriously at booking this about subsidising his costs in return for some articles. SAS is also interested in partnering with us.

    If this person does not go ahead (and getting from ‘planning’ to ‘booking’ is a big jump with this!) we’d be happy to chat to anyone else who had a ticketed booking in place, preferably an ‘all in one go’ itinerary.

    • GUWonder says:
      11 Oct11 October 12:08

      Have you hit up beaubo/Steve Belkin? He likes this kind of stuff. 😀

      He’s the legendary Thai baht run organizer that got the US DEA on his case for hiring rice farmers to do segment runs in Thailand. Of course, it all worked out fine as it was just mileage runs.

    • Throwawayname says:
      11 Oct11 October 14:24

      I’m going to make a decision on this during the weekend, will email you if I do go ahead.

    • Super Secret Stuff says:
      11 Oct11 October 17:43

      Check my route on the other article, would happily do it but doubt I could get the time off work! (Unless I’m made redundant which is actually a sad possibility)

    • Michael Gell says:
      12 Oct12 October 10:45

      I would 100% do it and would be able to do 24th October- 2nd November and 23rd November – 1st December but would need to offset costs for video vlogs or articles. I would rather partner up with a company as the publicity would likely ensure the points would be credited just incase there were issues further down the line.

    • Russell says:
      12 Oct12 October 16:02

      Please insist they make a YouTube video out of it! I’d love to watch this level of lunacy!

    • Tonei Glavinic says:
      12 Oct12 October 23:30

      I’m planning to do it, just waiting on a very slow points transfer to hopefully lock in my Asia-Europe flight for the end and then work backwards from there

  • R_B says:
    11 Oct11 October 14:02

    Nothing like ‘moving the goalposts’ when the bean counters realise this could be a loss leader.

    • Nico says:
      11 Oct11 October 14:16

      Exactly, very tempted to do it, just worried about moving goalpost

    • Throwawayname says:
      11 Oct11 October 15:03

      I don’t think any goalposts were actually moved, they just rushed to get this published without having ironed everything out. They were clear that redemptions would count, but failed to spell out that two airlines haven’t sorted the earnings bit out. Can anyone confirm that AMEX UK to Eurobonus transfers work well??

      • Nico says:
        11 Oct11 October 15:40

        agreed, I meant it feels like they have not really work out the details before publishing, which does not inspire confidence

      • GUWonder says:
        11 Oct11 October 16:24

        Award tickets only count if the award tickets are booked using SAS points. I can’t use Delta, Virgin or Air France/KLM-issued award tickets for this promo, because of the SAS terms for this promo.

        • Throwawayname says:
          11 Oct11 October 16:30

          Hence my question re AMEX transfers to EB. Has anyone ever made any?

  • Nick says:
    11 Oct11 October 16:06

    Discussing this today, someone pointed out another note of caution… the terms state you need to ‘earn points’, not just travel. A bunch of airlines don’t award on their cheapest fares, so if the T&C are applied literally then take care to book in the right class(es).

  • GUWonder says:
    11 Oct11 October 16:22

    Aerolineas Argentina + Air Europa are now listed as promo-eligible partners for flights that earn miles. This makes it easier for me. This makes it easier for me.

    • Throwawayname says:
      11 Oct11 October 18:07

      That’s perfect, I can get to 17/17 without too much of a worry.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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