Barry’s SAS million point challenge – Airline 8, Aeromexico (and Air France again)

Rob writes: In October, SAS announced the million points challenge – here’s our article. If you can fly 15 of the SkyTeam alliance carriers by the end of 2024, you will receive 1 million bonus SAS EuroBonus points.

It’s not a competition – everyone who hits the target will get the points.

A number of HfP readers took up the challenge. One of them was Barry Collins, who you may have seen discussing the challenge in The Times – click here (paywall, or click here for a non-paywall version).

Barry is sharing his trip with HfP readers. Part 1 and Part 2 looked at ‘why’ and ‘how’ (click to read). Airline 1 was Air Europa. Airline 2 was Air France. Airline 3 was TAROM. Airline 4 was KLM. Airline 5 was SAS. Airline 6 was Virgin Atlantic. Airline 7 was Delta.

Today Barry concludes the North American leg of his trip. Over to Barry ….

Mexico City to Paris, Aeromexico

I landed in Mexico City at around 7.45pm local time, 1.45am my time. Although I had managed to sleep for an hour or so on the last flight, the thought of another 10 hour flight coming up made me once again question my life choices. The airport had some kind of ‘day of the dead x fast cars’ mash-up displays. I’m not sure exactly what was going on, but it certainly looked cool. 

I cleared passport control and security, collected my boarding passes and went to find the lounge. The Terrace lounge in the international hall was closing in 20 minutes, so I ended up in the Aeromexico lounge in the domestic hall.

This had a distinctly American feel about it, being mainly set around two large circular bars you could perch at and watch the TV’s above. Food was lacklustre at best, and I was thankful I wasn’t desperate to eat here.

Seats felt as if they were just placed randomly in the middle of the room in places, and someone was having a very bad day, as they’d left their laptop on the seat opposite mine… On the plus side, there were plenty of staff milling around to clean and clear up as people left.

The plane felt almost identical to the Virgin flight earlier, but it was a 787 instead of an A350 (I checked). To be honest though, it was now 11pm local time and 5am my time, and I was absolutely broken.

Despite having two strangers in the middle and aisle seat, I popped out my trtl and eye mask, and slept for about 6 or 7 hours. This meant I completely missed the food service, so I cannot comment on this! A light snack of quiche and cake was served before landing. 

Like Virgin Atlantic, there was a large screen, packed with all the films and TV you could ever wish for. Also, a working USB port and a standard 3.5mm aux port for your own headphones – wireless aren’t lasting 10 hours! In my opinion this is far superior to the BA ‘double plug’ set up that makes you use their headphones …. 

A fizz tablet and an aspirin (wife’s orders, don’t come home with DVT!) and I disembarked the plane to find the Air France lounge and hopefully some food!

Paris to London, Air France

As I wrote in my article on how I planned the trip, I didn’t plan to fly Air France twice. I booked the European leg before I booked the North American one, which I meant I didn’t know it would be cheaper to return home via Paris (with an Air France connection) than direct. I could have skipped Air France on the European leg of the trip and arranged it differently.

The London to Paris route with Air France went from a different area of CDG to the Bucharest flight last week. This a very different lounge – low ceilings and partitions replace the double height open plan layout. It is also a lot smaller, though when I arrived in late afternoon it was pretty quiet.

I am feeling pretty grubby after three flights back to back so decided to do something I have never done before and utilise the showers in the lounge.

When I am travelling with the family, we would purposely avoid places that require a layover (if you have small children, you will understand!). However I would absolutely recommend taking a shower if you have a layover and time – the one in the Air France lounge today was glorious. Just what the doctor ordered.

Food in the lounge was a decent choice of hot and cold meals and snacks. The general theme I am getting is that airline affiliated lounges tend to be better than the generic ones … I’m sure there are exceptions (Centurion?!) but that’s my observation so far. 

If architecture is your thing, the terminal building in this part of CDG is an absolute marvel of engineering. Completely tubular in shape, with exposed steel frame and glass behind wood panelling. Plus free retro arcade games to play while you wait to board:

Compared to the standard squared off buildings of Atlanta and Mexico City, this feels positively space-age in comparison. 

I was back on board the funny little A220 with the 3/2 seating configuration. This one had working USB and USB-C ports, and the handy little phone holder like KLM too. Very good. Air France also treated us to a drink and small sandwich on this journey – I wonder why something wasn’t offered on the outward route last week?!

This also turned out to be my first delayed flight of the trip. I guess I was lucky in that regard with no connecting flight to worry about. We finally got off the ground an hour behind schedule, but other than that it was a very short and uneventful way to finish my mad weekend.

The 12-leg Middle East and Asia part would follow in a couple of weeks!  Little did I know at the time that the itinerary you can see below was not going to be how it worked out ….

Click here for the next article in this series.

The full itinerary

As a reminder, here is Barry’s full itinerary.

Trip 1 – Gatwick to Barcelona (easyjet), Madrid to Gatwick (Air Europa) booked as part of a family holiday

Trip 2 – Heathrow to Paris (Air France) – Paris to Bucharest (TAROM) – Bucharest to Amsterdam (KLM) – Amsterdam to Stockholm (SAS) – Stockholm to Heathrow (SAS) 

Trip 3 – Heathrow to Atlanta (Virgin Atlantic) – Atlanta to Mexico City (Delta) – Mexico City to Paris (Aeromexico) – Paris to Heathrow (Air France) 

Trip 4 – Stansted to Istanbul (Pegasus) – Istanbul to Riyadh (Pegasus) – Riyadh to Jeddah (Saudia) – Jeddah to Jakarta (Saudia) – Jakarta to Singapore (Garuda) – Singapore to Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam) – Ho Chi Minh to Taipei (China Airlines) – Taipei to Xiamen (Xiamen Airlines) – Xiamen to Shanghai (Xiamen Airlines) – Shanghai to Seoul (Korean) – Seoul to Shanghai (China Eastern) – Shanghai to Gatwick (China Eastern)

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