Barry’s SAS million point challenge – more bad news, and Airline 12 (China Airlines)
Links on Head for Points may support the site by paying a commission. See here for all partner links.
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. Airline 10 was Garuda Indonesia. Airline 11 was Vietnam Airlines.
We rejoin Barry in Ho Chi Minh City. He is yet to act on the news that one of his 15 flights, on Delta, appears to be non-qualifying for the promotion, leaving him one airline short as his itinerary stands. And it’s about to get worse.
Over to Barry ….
Ho Chi Minh City to Taipei, China Airlines
I didn’t oversleep, which I was slightly concerned about doing considering how tired I am. The first obstacle of the day was overcome.
My hotel included breakfast, so I ate fried rice before 8am for probably the first time in my life, then got them to order me a cab. As this was not an official metered cab, the price was a little over a third of what I paid yesterday at about £3.50. Vietnam is very, very cheap.
I took out 1m dong in cash (£31.68 including the ATM fee) to cover the two taxis I would need, plus dinner. Even including the ice-cream, it was way too much.
Although I had checked in online, I still needed to get a printed boarding pass from the airport according to the China Airlines website. The friendly check in man informed me that Ho Chi Minh was the only airport in the world that had no reciprocal lounge agreement with SAS for SkyTeam Elite Plus members so I would not be let in!
The check-in agent also managed to show me the Xiamen Airlines ticket class codes for my two flights with them tomorrow. Both codes were absent from the SAS ‘earn’ page on its website, which meant that they were unlikely to count for the promotion.
This would leave me two airlines short (adding in Delta) which would be impossible to overcome. I had some work to do in Xiamen to get at least one of these Xiamen Airlines flights to count ….
With no lounge access, I wandered up and down the terminal building looking at the plethora of souvenir options. Considering how cheap it was outside the airport, it was wildly expensive inside. I regretted tipping my cab driver double fare, as I now had to pay by card for a $6 coffee! Traditional Vietnamese coffee is delicious. Thick and slightly salty it is similar to maybe a Turkish coffee?
Despite being just a little under three hours, this flight to Taipei was on a widebody A350 with a 3-3-3 configuration in economy, and fully flat beds in business. The flight was full, but I had thankfully been given a window seat.
The extra room, plus fully working seat back entertainment and a working USB port felt very luxurious for such a short flight. Big marks lost though for not having individual air controls. It was very odd, and it made for an uncomfortably warm couple of hours.
Food was more fried rice, and having seen my neighbours prawn linguine I definitely felt like I made the wrong choice. Ordering Italian food on a flight between Vietnam and Taiwan would have just felt wrong though, so rice it was.
Taipei
Seeing so many countries one after the other means you notice the small cultural differences between them. For example in Indonesia, nobody let me out of my aisle to exit the plane from my middle seat, so I had to wait for a gap to nip out. Here in Taiwan, everyone is very polite and they even form an orderly queue to board the train or ride the escalator. Not a free for all in sight!
There are also numerous signs and PA announcements in English to remind you that eating and drinking (as well as smoking and even chewing gum) are strictly prohibited while on board. While I am quite thirsty, I have spent enough time on the tube to know what the downside of someone eating an egg sandwich in a confined space is like, so think on balance it’s probably a good rule to have.
Unlike Ho Chi Minh yesterday, walking through Taipei felt at times like being in an American city. Wide open roads run through the city with modern high rises on each side. Only the neon signs in Mandarin gave away that you weren’t in downtown Chicago.
The climate was temperate too, rather than the sticky oppressive heat at all times of the day and night. It was definitely jumper rather than shorts weather.
My hotel was opposite the Ximending walking district, a big tourist attraction in Taipei. It consists of a number of pedestrianised streets teeming with bars, restaurants, shops and dozens of street food vendors. I opted to sample of few of the ‘simpler’ street food options for dinner – grilled pork, fried dumplings, and blowtorched steak! All washed down with a huge cup of iced tea for less than £11.
Try as I might, I couldn’t find anywhere to sell just a single scoop of ice cream. I ended up with a huge ‘shaved ice’ dessert big enough for about four people (photo below)! It was about £4.50, but this is not a fair comparison to the ice cream I’d bought elsewhere.
As polite as the Taiwanese were earlier in the day, whoever was staying in my hotel was just as rude when coming back after a few beers at 3am. After the 3rd or 4th group came in and banged around, I gave up on sleep and began to ponder Roy and his assertions about fare classes.
I looked for flights from the big online travel agents, and found only Expedia showed the fare class when showing listings. I looked at airline websites for the contentious flights I had left on SkyTeam, and found only Delta gives out fare class information before booking. Nothing on the Xiamen Airlines or Kenya Airways websites.
I couldn’t believe there could be such a huge promotion that relied so heavily on something (exact fare class data) that simply was not freely available. I also re-read the T&C’s on the SAS website through my new ‘post meeting Roy’ eyes, and despite how it had read to me previously, it did now seem plausible that fare class was going to be a major factor in claiming my million points.
At about 5am, I started making plans to complete the challenge based on Roy’s advice. At 7.17am I got an email confirmation from SAS that you do indeed need to earn points for the flights to count – taking the flight is not enough, if the (mostly invisible) fare code is no good and credits as zero miles earned.
As it stands, I will miss out on the points from Delta and Xiamen so will only hit 13 airlines, assuming my TAROM flight ever credits to my account.
Twelve airlines down, three (or now possibly four or even five) to go.
Click here for the next article in the 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)
Stuart 
Robin 
Mike Hunt 
Marco 
Throwawayname 
Bagoly 
Charles Martel 
Nico 
Voldemort 
Barry 
Dubious 
BJ 
Russell 
John 
Comments (79)