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

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• Nico says:

  11 Oct11 October 21:03

  Is there a trick to get one way virgin flight to the US at normal price? Guessing not taking the return might cancel the miles award

  • Throwawayname says:

    12 Oct12 October 03:41

    Try buying a ticket from India/DXB/JNB.

    • Nico says:

      12 Oct12 October 07:57

      Thank you – just trying to see if it is possible to go round the world for a reasonable price – not so easy. US bit separately easier.

• Lee says:

  11 Oct11 October 22:42

  Is there going to be good opportunity to get a decent return from 1 million points ? When I looked the points redemption were asking for huge amount of points .

  • Jay says:

    12 Oct12 October 05:45

    Eurobonus let’s you book cash flights for points, hence why you’re seeing flights asking upwards of 400k points. You need to look for saver flights which have an indication next to it and the pricing is around 50k in economy for CPH JFK

    • Nico says:

      12 Oct12 October 08:24

      https://awardhacks.se/ Gives an idea. 30k one way eco to jfk from cph, 50 in business but hard to find

• e14 says:

  12 Oct12 October 04:15

  Having just had the three agents at PVR fail after 20 minutes at trying to get my SAS EBG number into a booking things aren’t off to a good start (and believe me they took it as a challenge).

  • GUWonder says:

    12 Oct12 October 12:41

    Unfortunately that kind of thing is a problem across more SkyTeam airlines than just Aeromexico.

    What you can try to do is to make refundable ticket bookings with the SAS number entered into the booking from the start — but then you have to figure out if you want to just put the numbers in or go for the current alphanumeric number starting with EB — on the operating airline’s website/app and then check-in while trying to see if the boarding pass pushes out a boarding pass indicating the SAS frequent flyer number. Then cancel and repeat (with some variation) the process and continue on for each and every SkyTeam carrier of relevance for this promotion.

  • beyounged says:

    12 Oct12 October 19:21

    it seems like for certain carriers, you have to do retro-claim in order to have it count. Yet unbelievably, the retro-claim deadline is Dec 20, and you can only do so 8 days after flight. This means you HAVE to fly airlines that probably does not have good IT and cannot even manually enter EB numbers by Dec 12, or there is a very high chance you will not be able to earn the miles.
    Confirmed unable to enter: AM
    Quite likely unable to enter because they likely have bad IT: GA, VN, MF, SV, RO
    Potentially unable to enter: VS, MU, CI, KE

• Bernard says:

  12 Oct12 October 09:09

  The crazy bit about this is that it’s very hard to avoid ending up in mainland China on this.

  A country the US State department advises against visiting.

  (Taiwan is a joy to visit though – great food, nature, even if the geology is a little lively)

  • Pogonation says:

    12 Oct12 October 09:38

    Ignore the US state dept bollox. China is incredibly safe and also has great food, nature and culture.. better than Taiwan considering the greater land mass and variation.

  • JDB says:

    12 Oct12 October 11:58

    @Bernard – this sounds remarkably xenophobic! We are currently in China on our 12th visit – it’s an absolutely wonderful country to visit for so many reasons. The US State Dept advises against travel to all sorts of countries/regions and bans federal employees from travel to them but you need to read what they say a little more thoroughly.

  • Throwawayname says:

    12 Oct12 October 16:18

    There are only two mainland Chinese airlines in this challenge. MU you can do as a back to back with the Kenya fifth freedom from BKK, and Xiamen sell through tickets for a huge amount of city pairs within East Asia, so you can likely avoid stepping outside the airport and into PRC proper.

    (For context, I have been to China 3-4 times and generally enjoyed my previous visits to the country but I am not a fan of their political direction nor keen on returning soon).

  • Dubious says:

    12 Oct12 October 23:00

    I’d have thought for most Headforpoints readers the UK FCDO would be more relevant. No such warnings there;
    https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/china

    The government of the USA have in the past used travel warnings as a political tool…

• ThinkSquare says:

  12 Oct12 October 09:12

  This feels a bit like Lufthansa’s 55555 miles promotion where you had to use 5 Star airlines. I did get my miles in the end but had to fight for them.

• Super Secret Stuff says:

  13 Oct13 October 15:51

  A fully planned out itinerary that avoids mainland china for anyone that wants it…
  MAN – FCO, KLM, £90, 17:15 – 23:10, 12th Dec
  FCO – OTP, Tarom, £60, 12:45 – 16:00, 13th Dec
  OTP – MAD, Wizzair, £38,
  06:10 – 09:30, 14th December
  MAD – AGP, Air europa, 15:10 – 16:20, £33, 14th December
  AGP – ARN, SAS, 19:30 – 23:10, £144 or points, 15th December
  ARN – DXB, SAS & Air France, 08:15 – 23:00, £429 or points, 16th December
  DXB – NBO, Saudia, 21:00 – 05:35, £248 or points, 17th December
  NBO – BKK, Kenyan, 23:59 – 13:30, £559 or points, 18th December
  BKK – SGN, Vietnam, 22:20 – 13:50, £145, 18th December
  CGK – ICN, 23:30 – 08:30, Guaruda, £256, 19th December
  ICN – TPE, 16:15 – 18:10, Korean air, £69, 20th December
  TPE – SFO, 23:50 – 19:30, China airlines, £398, 20th December
  LAX – CUN, 07:05 – 18:31, Aeroméxico, points, 21st December
  CUN – EZE, 08:50 – 17:30, Aerolineas Argentina, points, 22nd December
  EZE – MIA, 22:45 – 06:05, Aerolíneas Argentina, points, 22nd December
  MIA – LHR, 13:59 – 06:25, Delta and virgin, points or £600+, 23rd December

  • Paul says:

    14 Oct14 October 12:23

    Fantastic effort, thanks.

• Ben says:

  14 Oct14 October 14:44

  I decided to do this on Friday and set off on my first flight on the following day. Only had the next couple weeks off so had to act fast. Planning was a logistical nightmare to try to find affordable flights at such a short notice and ended up spending £2475 on flights.
  Also I didn’t help myself by not remembering that I needed a visa for China. This would have made the planning easy and cheaper as it would have allowed to travel from 1 city in China to another
  one and not having to go via a third
  country or Hong Kong/Taiwan/Macao. These are the flights and itinerary I
  purchased departing 12th October and
  back on October 24th:
  1- London to Jakarta via Jeddah on Saudia I had to make sure that they added my SAS account detaisl at the gate (points credited to my SAS account already!)
  2- Jakarta to Singapore on Garuda
  (Did not manage to use KLM’s 2 fifth
  Freedom flights in the area)
  3- Singapore to Seoul via Ho Chi Minh City
  on Vietnam Airlines
  4- Seoul to Guangzhou on Korean Air
  5- Guangzhou to Bangkok on Kenya Airlines (fifth Freedom flight)
  6- Bangkok to Taipei via Xiamen on
  Xiamen Airlines
  7- Taipei to Shanghai on China Airlines
  8- Shanghai to Tokyo on Eastern Airline
  9- Tokyo to San Francisco (couldn’t find a
  cheap Sky team to use so flying with
  Zipair, low cost from JAL)
  10- San Francisco to Los Angeles on Delta
  (be careful to not just buy basic economy
  on Delta as it doesn’t credit points)
  11- Los Angeles to Mexico City (had to do
  this on Viva Aerobus because of flight
  times)
  12- Mexico City to Miami on Aeromexico
  13- Miami to London on Virgin Atlantic

  Hopefully this can give some ideas to a few of you. Will have to do Air France, SAS, KLM, Tarom on a quick Europe trip which I can plan cheaply soon. Keeping Air Europa to the side until SAS can confirm it can credit points soon.

  • Dubious says:

    14 Oct14 October 15:40

    Wow, well done! How long did it take Friday to…?

    And did it feel painful??

• Rob says:

  14 Oct14 October 21:53

  Okay, so I’m all booked in, starting on 29th November. This covers everything except AE & AA. I’m going to pick up AE on my return to Mexico:

  Cancun (CUN) to London Gatwick (LGW) on Aeromexico
  London Heathrow (LHR) to Johannesburg (JNB) on Virgin Atlantic
  Johannesburg (JNB) to Nairobi (NBO) on Kenya Airways
  Nairobi (NBO) to Guangzhou (CAN) on Qatar Airways
  Guangzhou (CAN) to Shanghai (SHA) on China Eastern Airlines
  Shanghai (PVG) to Taipei (TPE) on China Airlines
  Taipei (TSA) to Xiamen (XMN) on Xiamen Airlines
  Xiamen (XMN) to Seoul Incheon (ICN) on Korean Air
  Seoul Incheon (ICN) to Hanoi (HAN) on Vietnam Airlines
  Hanoi (HAN) to Jakarta (CGK) on VietJet
  Jakarta (CGK) to Singapore (SIN) on Garuda Indonesia
  Singapore (SIN) to Jeddah (JED) on Qatar Airways
  Jeddah (JED) to Cairo (CAI) on Saudia
  Cairo (CAI) to Bucharest (OTP) on Tarom
  Bucharest (OTP) to Prague (PRG) on SAS
  Prague (PRG) to Amsterdam (AMS) on KLM
  Amsterdam (AMS) to Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG) on KLM
  Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG) to London Heathrow (LHR) on Air France

  I am a little worried about people saying it’s difficult to add frequent flyer numbers to some airlines. I used MyTrip.com for a lot of these booking and just entered my frequent flyer number – are you saying that this isn’t a reliable way to earn the miles?

  • Rob says:

    15 Oct15 October 02:30

    Right ok, that does make sense. The last 4 flights are all on the 13th 😥.

    Yes, you’re right – we are flying Aerolineas Argentinas separately, but it seems that won’t do for this.

    My partner is unlikely to be able to get US visa in time to do Delta. What are your thoughts on booking a Delta flight using SAS points and then just not flying – do you think that would count?

  • Ben says:

    15 Oct15 October 04:55

    I have used Trip.com for most of my flights too. So far no issue adding the EB number at the gate or check in with Saudia and Garuda

    • Rob says:

      16 Oct16 October 04:32

      Oh nice, thanks, that’s re-assuring – actually lots of the flights I’ve booked have now appeared on SAS EuroBonus login.

      I have actually finished booking *all* the [24] flights now – I decided to forego one of the 2 day stops and finish all the flights by 12/12.

      We’re going to take my x360 and my other action cam… happy to share footage and colab on an article @hfp

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