Challenge accepted.
When SAS EuroBonus launched a promotion last week to earn one million miles by flying 15 different SkyTeam airlines by the end of 2024, we knew we couldn’t resist it. Given Frequent Miler’s history of past challenges like 40K to Far Away, 3 Cards 3 Continents, and Flying by the Seat of our Points (among others), this SAS promotion is not just in our wheelhouse, it might as well be our wheelhouse. We knew it. Readers knew it. It’s about to be ON. And this time, readers have a chance to win. You are going to have the chance to help us design our itineraries, with the most helpful among you earning prizes. The audience member who is most instrumental in crafting the overall winning itinerary will win the grand prize.
Long time readers (very long time readers) may remember that back in 2013 Greg challenged himself to earn 1 million points & miles in 1 month (read more about that challenge here). He called that challenge Million Mile Madness. For this challenge we’re recycling the name, but we intend to each earn a million miles in far less than 1 month.
The SAS EuroBonus Million Mile promotion
If you’re not familiar with the SAS EuroBonus Millionaire promotion, see full details in our post: SAS Airlines will give you up to a million points to fly SkyTeam partners.
In short, Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) recently joined the SkyTeam alliance. To raise awareness of their new alliance and partners, they are offering a promotion whereby SAS EuroBonus members can register and then earn bonus miles by flying paid tickets credited to SAS EuroBonus or award tickets booked using EuroBonus miles. The top tier of the promotion is the only one that yields enough miles to be worth chasing: fly 15 qualifying SkyTeam airlines before the end of 2024 and earn one million miles. These are the qualifying airlines:
- Aerolíneas Argentinas (but note that this won’t be integrated until sometime in December, possibly not soon enough for the promotion, so an award ticket might be the only way to include Aerolineas Argentinas — and none of us have existing SAS miles).
- AeroMexico
- Air Europa (integrating sometime this month; we intend to travel in November, so this should be on the table)
- Air France
- China Airlines
- China Eastern
- Delta Air Lines
- Garuda Indonesia
- Kenya Airways
- KLM
- Korean Air
- SAS
- SAUDIA
- TAROM
- Vietnam Airlines
- Virgin Atlantic
- Xiamen Air
Note that this list leaves out a few SkyTeam carriers that are not part of the promotion (ITA and Middle Eastern Airlines as well as Czech Airways, which is ending operations this month). And keep in mind that you either need to earn SAS EuroBonus miles for the flight (i.e. it needs to be a fare class eligible to earn miles) or redeem SAS EuroBonus miles for the flight.
The SAS promotion itself isn’t a contest. Anyone who registers and earns SAS miles from 15 different qualifying SkyTeam carriers (and/or uses EuroBonus miles to fly on those SkyTeam carriers) will earn one million miles. The promotion can be earned by everyone who completes it.
But rather than simply completing this challenge quietly and individually, we immediately saw an opportunity to turn SAS’s promotion into a team (and reader) challenge . . .
Frequent Miler’s Million Mile Madness 2024
For this challenge, Greg, Stephen, and I (Nick) will be competing against each other to design the itinerary with the most “SAS” possible that meets the terms of the promotion and earns us each a million miles. What do I mean by the most “SAS”? We’ll be judged on three core criteria:
- Speed: The faster you can complete the challenge and the least time in-flight the better.
- Affordability: Who can book the cheapest flights eligible to earn miles?
- Style: Fast and cheap is good. Fast, cheap, and in style is better.
However, rather than working independently on this, we wanted to pool the resources and expertise of our Frequent Miler audience. This is where you come in, along with your chance to win!
Later today, Greg, Stephen, and I will each publish a “journal” post where we will list our individual parameters / restrictions. For instance, we have a window in November 2024 within which we will all travel, but we each have slightly different date availability, starting cities and other requirements. Stephen is a UK citizen, so visa considerations may be different for him. We’ll detail our own personal criteria, restrictions, and goals in those posts (and the three of us don’t intend to take ideas from another contestant’s post for the purposes of planning).
We want your help in crafting itineraries. With the need to design an itinerary that includes fifteen different airlines, there are what feels like an infinite number of ways to tackle this challenge. We want reader input: in the comments of our individual posts, we want you to share proposed itineraries, tips about cheap flights, fifth freedom flights, things we should do during our (very short) stops along the way, etc.
The most helpful among you will be rewarded for your efforts. Each of us will select the reader / listener / audience member who has been most helpful in crafting our ultimate trip. To be clear, I imagine that it will be unlikely that a reader will propose the exact itinerary that one of us will fly — I expect there will be some element of tweaking no matter what, hence why we’re leaving it open to selecting the most helpful reader. Hopefully, this also encourages collaboration between readers. You’ll be able to comment on our individual planning / journal posts starting later today. In those posts, we’ll also list other ways to contact us (via email, Instagram DM, etc).
At the end of the competition, Tim, Carrie, and you (the Frequent Miler audience) will together select which Frequent Miler team member did the best job in completing the Million Mile Challenge with the most SAS. The reader selected as the most helpful in crafting that itinerary will win a grand prize.
Prizes are to be announced soon.
When is this happening?
We’ll be kicking off our individual planning posts later today. All of us will travel in mid-November, though not necessarily all on the same set of dates. We will be taking suggestions / reader submissions until Friday, October 25th.
We will hold a special Youtube Live on Tuesday, October 29th where will each announce the itinerary that we’ve booked. Then, in November, you’ll be able to follow along live on Instagram, Youtube, and here on the blog as we each traverse the globe on our individual quests to earn one million miles and help our reader win the challenge.
What are 1,000,000 SAS miles worth?
A reasonable question from the get-go may be this: Is it worth pursuing one million SAS miles through this promotion?
The short answer is that no, it probably isn’t for most people. For starters, you have to fly 15 different airlines — and if you don’t have SAS miles, it’s going to cost you a bundle of cash to book those flights. Then there is the very real time cost — given the geographic distribution of airlines, I expect this will take at least one week and likely more like 10 to 14 days. I imagine that relatively few people will pursue the top end of this promotion.
That said, if you’re looking for a number, I would say that most airline miles are worth somewhere between 1 cent and 2 cents per mile depending on how you use them. That would put the value of one million miles at something between $10,000 and $20,000. As a point of context, business class awards between North America and Europe on SAS cost 50,000 miles each way or the same routing on SkyTeam partners costs 78,000 miles one-way or 130,000 miles round trip. With a million miles, you’d have enough for 10 round trip business class tickets to Europe on SAS or 7.5 on SkyTeam partners.
Have tips for us?
We’re looking forward to reader help! As noted above, the most helpful readers will be rewarded for their efforts. Leave your tips in our journal / planning posts — click the images below to go to each one.
Greg
Stephen
Nick
If you’d rather reach out privately, you can send an email to our Mailbag here – put the name of the contestant in the subject line and the words “Million Mile Madness” to make sure that the right person sees the tip and the rest of us will know it’s not for us.
Looking for the latest details?
Subscribe to emails for all Frequent Miler updates, but head over to millionmilemadness.com for the latest updates on this challenge, including links to our journal posts as they go live, links to find us on social media when we begin traveling, and more.
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