Barry’s SAS million point challenge – a worrying chat, Airlines 10 (Garuda) and 11 (Vietnam)

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. Airline 8 was Aeromexico. Airline 9 was Saudia.

We rejoin Barry as he arrives in Jakarta to start the ‘proper’ Asia leg of the trip, having flown in from Jeddah on Saudia. Things were about to take a turn for the worse.

Over to Barry ….

A worrying chat with Roy in Jakarta Airport

With my longest layover at nearly 7 hours, I took my time getting off the plane in Jakarta and into the terminal. I found my way to the transfer desk but it was unmanned.

A member of airport staff said that as I had a boarding pass on my phone, I could go upstairs through transfer security. Transfer security, however, wholeheartedly disagreed with this and walked me back downstairs. They both looked for someone from Garuda as it was my next airline, but no joy.

After a bit of a disagreement with the airport staff as to whether I needed a visa to transit with a confirmed booking (according to their own website, I don’t!), I eventually gave up and bought a tourist visa, went through passport control and left the airport – passing on my way the largest biophillic wall I have ever seen. I then circled around to departures and re-entered. £26 well spent. 

With the lounge not opening for another three hours, I found a comfy spot and pitched up. The person who’d been sat next to me on the Saudia flight came over and chatted, as he’d guessed I was also doing the SAS challenge like him!

Roy lives in Sydney but had three weeks off before taking up a new job. He was off by himself travelling the world and picking up the points on his way.

Unlike me, Roy (picture below) is a bit of a travel geek and has an encyclopedic knowledge of airlines, flights and all the associated codes and jargon. He had also been studying Flyertalk and other online forums discussing the challenge – which I hadn’t – and informed me that it was apparently a well known fact that not all flights with SkyTeam partners will count for this promotion.

I had seen this mentioned in a Wall Street Journal article on the challenge, but as the only airline listed on the SAS site with the possibility of zero points was TAROM (for O, X & W codes), I didn’t worry about it. My TAROM ticket was clearly in V class.

What I hadn’t considered is that some airlines may have non-earning ticket classes which SAS hadn’t bothered to list as earning zero points. My assumption had been that if nothing was listed as non-earning then EVERYTHING would earn.

On the tickets I had bought through a travel agent, the ticket code wasn’t visible. I had just a booking reference and a ticket number.

Roy said that there were issues with Xiamen and Delta economy flights ticketing predominantly into non-qualifying ticket buckets. We tried to look at my upcoming Xiamen flights but the website would not let me in to see. 

My Delta flight, however, had already been flown and I had the boarding pass. Sure enough, the ticket class shown wasn’t listed, at all, on the SAS website, either as qualifying or non-qualifying.

The flight had been booked via Virgin Atlantic and the Virgin Atlantic ticket code (E) seemed to have carried over from the outbound journey. SAS only recognised B, H, K, L, M, Q, S, T, U, V, W, X and Y as valid Delta economy classes.

Roy thought I was stuffed. I was hopeful that SAS wouldn’t fall back on the small print (or in this case, zero print) in order to avoid paying up. As ticketing class is ‘an airline thing’ that the end user customers have no control over – and cannot even see in advance without special tools in many cases – I didn’t see how it could possibly be a condition of the promotion?!

I was worried enough though. I spent an hour working out if there was another route home that would allow me to tick off an extra airline just in case.

I came up with what I thought was a pretty solid plan. My current routing was to fly from Seoul to London Gatwick on China Eastern, with an aircraft change in Shanghai.

Instead, I could get a low cost airline from Seoul to Guangzhou, jump on the (SkyTeam) Kenya Airways ‘fifth freedom’ flight from Guangzhou to Bangkok and then get a China Eastern flight back home from there.

This Kenya Airways flight has been very popular with those taking the challenge. It allows you to tick off the only African SkyTeam member without actually going there. Roy, however, thinks that all of the currently bookable seats on the Kenya Airways flight are non-qualifying ticket codes. I am thinking about packing up and going home.

Jakarta to Singapore, Garuda Indonesia

On the upside, the food in the Jakarta lounge is a delicious Indonesian fried rice, with snapper and potatoes. The shower wasn’t as good as Air France, but certainly appreciated.

I am back to the narrow body planes now, and this one from Garuda had the big 2-2 seats in business and actual working seat back entertainment systems! But no USB power ports. Boo.

Despite the short flight time of less than 90 minutes, Garuda was able to serve a quick breakfast of omelette and chicken sausage. 

Living just outside of Eastbourne, we can see the English Channel from our house. Ostensibly the busiest shipping lane in the world, the vessels go across the horizon like ducks at a carnival shooting gallery. Well today I have located the world’s supply of missing container ships – they are all in Singapore’s harbour.

Singapore to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Airlines

As I had heard numerous times how great Changi Airport in Singapore was, I had high expectations. It is absolutely huge, no doubt. I counted at least six lounges just in the B section of Terminal 3 – so God only knows how many there are in total!

There are numerous unique features like the slide, a constantly running free cinema, a butterfly garden and of course the massive indoor waterfall. The main concourse, though, felt to me very American in style. Given the time of year I half expected the McCallisters to run past me trying to get their plane before it went without them! 

As I was unable to check in online through the Vietnam Airlines website, I had to wait until the transfer desk would consider printing one for me, a maximum of three hours before departure.

I was feeling a bit Tom Hanks – unable to get into the lounge without my boarding pass, and stuck in limbo in the terminal. I caught the second half of a film at the cinema, and went on the train a couple of times to see the waterfall.  I would have had to clear customs both ways to see it in person so didn’t bother.

When I did finally get into the SATS lounge that serves Vietnam Airlines and some of the other SkyTeam airlines, I ate some noodles for lunch, charged my batteries, and tried my best not to fall asleep for fear of missing my flight!

It is now about 4am UK time on Saturday, and I had got on my first flight at 8pm on Thursday. With the bad news from Roy, and about four hours sleep in total, I was really beginning to feel it.

This flight marked my first ‘upgrade’ of sorts as I had landed an extra legroom emergency row seat for no additional cost. I was hoping to stretch out and sleep for as much of the flight as possible.

Only the separate business class section at the front of the plane differentiates it from an easyJet one. Fabric seats with no adjustable headrest, no in-flight entertainment, and no charging facilities of any kind do feel at the basic end of what it is possible to offer on these type of planes.

I dozed the whole flight and declined the food offering, so unfortunately can’t comment on its quality. But still, it was good to be offered something on such a short flight.

Ho Chi Minh City

Move over Bucharest, we have a new champion. The longest queue at an airport now goes to Ho Chi Minh City, with this outstanding queue to get through passport control, which took around an hour to navigate:

Once outside, you are bombarded with offers of sim cards and taxis. I’m sure it probably would be cheaper to grab one of them, or even a bus, but I was knackered and played it safe with a metered cab from the taxi rank.

When everyone is a crazy driver, no one is a crazy driver. That’s the only way I could explain the traffic in Ho Chi Minh. It is absolutely bonkers but they are all being bonkers together so, somehow, it just works. It looks like pure chaos from the passenger seat though:

I had opted for authentic over luxury, so my hotel was at the end of an alley that was down another alley (my wife would have taken one look, and just turned around at the main road!).

I had a quick nap then grabbed some pho from a local restaurant and soaked in the hustle and bustle of it all for a couple of hours. Hectic doesn’t even start to cover it. There is an incredible energy about this place – it felt like a mix of Hong Kong and a Thai resort – and definitely somewhere to come back to and explore properly with the family. 

The stand next to where I sat was serving fresh snail hot pot, and I can’t help but wonder how my kids would deal with even the idea! I then found probably the most expensive ice cream in the city, which clocked in at £1.91 including the shaved coconut and macaron. £1.43 would be a direct comparison to Madrid and Bucharest. 

My hotel down the alley was clean and quiet, and after not even registering a sleep score on my fitbit the last two nights, I was very much ready for bed. 

Eleven airlines down, four (or now possibly five) to go.

Click here for the next article in this series.

The full itinerary

As a reminder, here is Barry’s full (original) 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) Heathrow to Jeddah (British Airways) – 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)