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Barry’s SAS million point challenge – more bad news, and Airline 12 (China Airlines)

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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).

SAS million point challenge

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.

SAS Million Point Challenge

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?

SAS Million Point Challenge

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.

SAS Million Point Challenge

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.

SAS Million Points Challenge

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.

SAS Million Point Challenge

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. 

SAS Million Point Challenge

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.

SAS Million Point Challenge

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)

Category

SkyTeam alliance partners

Comments (79)

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

  • Jet says:
    28 Dec28 December 07:15

    I really hope it will work for you in the end

  • Jan M says:
    28 Dec28 December 07:21

    This is a fun read but hard to imagine that it won’t work out in the end – after all, the offer was meant to generate positive publicity for SAS and Skyteam… Plus Barry is writing for this site. It would be a bit fiasco for SAS if someone doesn’t intervene.

    • BSI1978 says:
      28 Dec28 December 07:31

      Have to agree with this. Suspect (hope?!) Rob has already been in contact with someone from SAS flagging this (I seem to recall at the outset Rob writing he had an in if need be) to ensure a successful outcome.

      • Nick says:
        28 Dec28 December 09:11

        If SAS intervene here (publicly) they would need to do it for everyone. It’s not a case of a flight crediting with zero points – ironically that would probably be fine! – more that flights don’t credit at all if they earn zero points.

        • Rob says:
          28 Dec28 December 09:26

          All will be revelaed in next Saturday’s FT Weekend newspaper, which is partly why I have slowed down the publication of the remaining episodes to match.

          • Occasional Ranter says:
            28 Dec28 December 09:57

            Barry is our Everyman, in this compelling drama about overly complex rules and legalism in airline loyalty. Skyteam have at least as much to learn from this whole saga as Barry does 😉

          • Can2 says:
            28 Dec28 December 11:30

            Drum roll!!!

  • Lumma says:
    28 Dec28 December 07:28

    For something that takes such extreme effort to complete, it’s ludicrous that you need to ensure that the booking code is correct to earn miles, especially when the information isn’t easily available. Two out of three of my internal flights in Colombia in November earned nothing (LATAM in Royal Jordanian and Avianca in Iberia) without warning from the selling airline and neither were the cheapest ticket available

    • Novice says:
      28 Dec28 December 09:40

      I will be honest before this challenge and Barry’s adventure, I didn’t even know that there were some flights that wouldn’t credit points.

      And, I hardly knew anything about codes. This has not only been an adventurous series of articles but very informative too.

      Barry, I hope you get your points.

    • Phillip says:
      28 Dec28 December 10:00

      It’s something covered widely on HfP… from
      Cathay’s cheap business class fares at one point being problematic to the infamous Lufthansa Business class P-fares that credit zero on the vast majority of Star Alliance programmes!

      • Novice says:
        28 Dec28 December 10:12

        I said hardly knew anything. I know about business class. HfP mostly covers business class. And, I read the site every day but don’t remember everything as a lot of the information given doesn’t apply to me anyway as a solo traveller mostly.

      • Rob says:
        28 Dec28 December 10:34

        I think ‘widely’ is pushing it a bit. Fare classes are the sort of thing we deliberately avoid discussing because it is unnecessarily complex for most of our readers.

        Remember that, factoring in weekly and daily email subscribers and daily site visitors, there is a core HfP readership of 100-150,000 people. The subgroup who care about things like fare classes is probably 10% of that.

        • Phillip says:
          28 Dec28 December 10:58

          Fair enough.

          • meta says:
            28 Dec28 December 11:35

            I recently chose the wrong programme to
            credit my Lufty fly. I should have credited to Aegan where I’d earn about 1500 points instead of Aeroplan where I earned only about 200. I should have really checked wheretocredit site but I wrongly assumed it’s the same as inter-Asian short-haul flights.

          • Lumma says:
            28 Dec28 December 13:00

            Even where to credit isn’t perfect as according to it, the only programme that earns points on LATAM Colombia is BA. Not even LATAM’s own programme!

    • Callum says:
      28 Dec28 December 16:55

      Fare basis codes have been a crucial part of how frequent flyer schemes work for literally decades, and have been mentioned on here (in articles – not just buried in comments) countless times

      I have absolutely no idea why so many people apparently engaged enough to read a frequent flyer blog on a daily basis are finding this to be new information! I know it’s always been a standard part of how I book flights and contrary to the several people claiming otherwise, you can virtually always be fairly certain of what the code is before booking – without needing to call. (Many airlines have it buried in fare conditions, those that don’t display it I have never failed to correctly identify it by using either Expedia or ITA Matrix).

      • cin4 says:
        28 Dec28 December 20:31

        Hear, hear. Feigning ignorance about ITA Matrix in 2024 is somewhat ridiculous.

      • Novice says:
        28 Dec28 December 22:47

        I think it depends on the person.

        I read the site every day but I am a leisure traveller who mostly pays for my flights with my own money. I don’t work for a company/someone nor do I generate thousands a week for points as I am an artist and writer so I don’t care about chasing status anywhere using somebody else’s money as some business travellers are doing.

        In that instance, as a passenger I am not bothered to look for codes when booking because I only care about the class and what is the class offering (lounge, flexibility, fast track etc) so then have never had a problem with a flight not getting points.

        There might be some readers on the site like me who are here for the latest news, reviews, inspiration and as a bonus the little points that they do get from some activity.

    • Gordon says:
      28 Dec28 December 17:56

      I have internal flights with both Latem and Avianca on my present trip, and I didn’t know of the connection! I will see if I can claim the points post booking.

  • ed_fly says:
    28 Dec28 December 07:39

    I wonder how many intrepid travellers may get caught out by a non-qualifying flight rule, if SAS choose to apply it. That would be a real kick in the teeth.

    • ed_fly says:
      28 Dec28 December 07:42

      P.s. It’s ironic that the point of the challenge is seemingly to promote SAS joining SkyTeam, yet my take away is how difficult it is to earn miles while travelling on the SkyTeam alliance.

      • Barrel for Scraping says:
        28 Dec28 December 09:55

        Plus how all SkyTeam partners are not equal with the omission of ITA and MEA from the promotion

        • John says:
          28 Dec28 December 16:49

          For all of it to credit SAS needs contracts with other SkyTeam partners. ITA has been purchased by LH and is going to move to *A. They aren’t making new contracts with new ST members. ITA themselves in general never finished the integration into ST.
          MEA most likely is having some more concerning issues that rank above FFP integration.

  • Susan says:
    28 Dec28 December 07:52

    No lawyer here but would not the EU’s fairness in contract terms at least be arguable – imposing a restriction which cannot reasonably be checked before purchase seems a tad unfair.

    • Nick says:
      28 Dec28 December 09:13

      The thing is, it CAN be checked before purchase, and SAS and the airlines concerned could prove it if necessary. After Barry’s last post I checked the websites he claimed to struggle with and found exactly what he needed…

      • Barry says:
        28 Dec28 December 09:20

        I doubled checked my screen grabs from that day. Xiamen Airlines website is completely different in the UK to China (yes, I can see fare the codes on the UK website). 100% no fare class codes available. Same as Kenya Airways 👍

    • Rob says:
      28 Dec28 December 09:14

      I’m pretty sure that SAS changed the website wording. When the challenge launched, it said something like ‘all flights must be credited to your EuroBonus account’. A flight crediting with zero miles generated would meet that requirement.

      I think it was later on that they changed the wording to say ‘flights must earn points’.

      If you look at our original coverage from October it just talks about flights crediting, not necessarily earning.

      • Phillip says:
        28 Dec28 December 09:57

        And what is SAS’s position on redemption flights? Do they tick the box by the fact that they are Eurobonus redemptions and can be picked up from the account or do those also need to credit, even if zero?

        • Rob says:
          28 Dec28 December 10:01

          Not heard of anyone having problems with including redemptions.

        • Barry says:
          28 Dec28 December 11:07

          Phillip, redemption flights in any fare class code work for this promotion no problem at all 👍

          • Phillip says:
            28 Dec28 December 11:12

            Thanks Barry. I know they work, but my question was more about if SAS’s expectation is for the redemption flights to post/register on the account or not, even with 0 miles. 3 of the airlines I took were Eurobonus redemptions. They haven’t posted to my account (which is what I expected) although I have submitted a missing claim for them. I was just wondering if for SAS it’s sufficient that they were booked from my Eurobonus account or whether they actually expect them to post?

          • Barry says:
            28 Dec28 December 11:42

            Phillip, I have been told that as long as your eurobonus account was used and points debited for the flight, you are golden

          • Phillip says:
            28 Dec28 December 11:50

            Thanks Barry – Golden it is!

      • Occasional Ranter says:
        28 Dec28 December 10:00

        “I’m pretty sure that SAS changed the website wording”

        This will be a crucial plot twist in the dramatisation which is surely already in the works, starring Toby Jones as Barry ?

      • Nick says:
        28 Dec28 December 10:16

        I think the change was for clarity purposes rather than the term itself. SAS (common with most of skyteam) doesn’t actually post anything to your account if it earns it redeems zero points, so they have no record of you taking the flight. Contrast that with BA (for example) who still post it but alongside the words ‘ineligible flight’. A technicality but an important one here.

        • Rob says:
          28 Dec28 December 10:31

          Noted. My only experience of this is BA / oneworld.

          • Jingle says:
            28 Dec28 December 12:38

            As a regular traveller to KUL and user of Qatar,MASand BA to accumulate TPs via the Ba site, this strikes a chord. The BA TP allocation per code travelled is laid out on the website. However Qatar has different award levels of TPs with the same code number as BA. So even tho I book on BA it’s a lottery to see how many (Economy) TPs are awarded per leg. Never yet know what I will get. Making the journey to Gold as bumpy and full of potholes as Antigua’s roads!
            And don’t bother mentioning the chaos that is Malaysian 🙄.Still as you say it’s a minority sport for most readers.

        • Marcw says:
          28 Dec28 December 10:43

          This is going to be airline specific. Iberia Plus and American Advantage show no evidence of me flying non-earning Malaysia Airlines flights in Economy. I knew beforehand that the fare was non-eligible for mileage earning.

  • Vit says:
    28 Dec28 December 09:12

    “ I ate fried rice before 8am…”

    Tell me you’re in SE Asia without telling me you’re in SE Asia. 😅

    • Paul says:
      28 Dec28 December 09:22

      I have lived and holidayed in South East Asia and can safely say I never ate rice before 8am. It’s just wrong on so many levels! I need coffee, toast and an egg:)

      • Sam says:
        28 Dec28 December 09:29

        Have you never eaten congee?

      • Alex G says:
        28 Dec28 December 09:55

        I love breakfast in Japan. Chicken. Miso Soup. Rice. Fish. Tofu.

        And of course kedgeree has been a breakfast item for the British for two hundred years.

        Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

        Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.

        • Alex says:
          28 Dec28 December 11:58

          Re Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.

          Interesting that this is even have equivalent in different cultures, where I was born it is : “eat breakfast by yourself, share lunch with friend and gift supper to enemy “

  • Occasional Ranter says:
    28 Dec28 December 09:53

    Last month I flew Thai vietjet 2 legs transiting Bangkok. Fried rice served as included meal on leg 1, and on leg 2, and guess what was the only appetising hot option in the lounge in between…

  • danstravel says:
    28 Dec28 December 11:11

    Thank you Barry for documenting your travels!

    The style of writing is compelling and it has been quite fun reading the trial and tribulations of your experience with this challenge.

    Lots of youtubers and posters on Flyertalk have done this challenge (and I am sure successfully) but something about a novice doing it that makes it much more relatable…

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