Update: All Booked! Stephen’s Million Mile Madness planning journal

Million Mile Madness really will be madness. And I’m probably mad for wanting to take part in this new Frequent Miler challenge.

If you haven’t had a chance to check it out already, be sure to read this challenge launch post which explains in greater detail what we’re up to. As a quick recap, Greg, Nick, and I are jetting off around the world on a quest to each earn 1 million miles courtesy of the EuroBonus Millionaire promo being run by SAS. To earn those 1 million miles, we have to fly 15 different SkyTeam airlines before the end of the year, but the self-imposed time constraints are even more severe than that (more about that shortly).

Seeing as this million mile promotion is being run by SAS (Scandinavian Airlines), we contestants will be judged on SAS – Speed, Affordability, and Style.

This challenge isn’t just about us though. In fact, you – the readers – will have a massive role in our journeys, with the opportunity to win prizes. The three of us will each pick a reader who helped us the most and they’ll win a prize, with the reader who helped the eventual winner winning a Grand Prize (stay tuned for more about what those prizes will be).

I’ll gratefully accept all the help I can get, so here’s how you can help me – and you! – win.

Constraints

• Departure airport: My wife and I are due to be spending most of November in Las Vegas, so that’s the airport that I’ll be flying out of. Seeing as Delta is one of the eligible airlines, taking a cheap flight from Vegas to somewhere like Los Angeles, Seattle or San Francisco to then head to Asia might make sense. However, perhaps there’ll be a cheap flight from Las Vegas to New York and from there I can get a cheap flight to Europe on Virgin Atlantic, KLM or Air France. Or maybe fly from Vegas to Mexico City on Delta or Aeromexico and then back up from there to a different US city and onwards.
• Departure date:
  • Earliest departure date – November 4 (Monday) after midday
  • Ideal departure date – November 5-7 (Tuesday-Thursday), but can leave later than November 7 with the right itinerary
• Return date: I need to be back in Vegas by November 20.
• Passport: Unlike Greg and Nick, I don’t have a US passport – I have a UK passport as I’m a Permanent Resident here in the US. I don’t think there are many differences in terms of where they’re accepted around the world, but it’s something to be aware of, especially with countries where I won’t just be transiting through the airport.

Potentially Useful Stuff (Or Lack Thereof)

Unlike Greg, I don’t have any flight credits, upgrade certificates, etc. that will be applicable to this challenge. However, that could potentially be a blessing in disguise because it means I won’t have the temptation to book sub-optimal flights in order to take advantage of those other types of benefits.

Qualifying Airlines

Here are the 16 airlines available for the promotion. Since I need to fly 15 of them, I can only leave 1 off the list:

• Qualifying airlines based in North America
  • Aeromexico
  • Delta
• Qualifying airlines based in Europe (primary hubs shown in parentheses)
  • Air Europa (Madrid MAD)
  • Air France (Paris CDG)
  • KLM (Amsterdam AMS): KLM also has several 5th Freedom Flights entirely in Asia: KUL to Jakarta (CGK); SIN to Denpasar DPS; Taipei (TPE) to Manila (MNL)
  • SAS (Copenhagen CPH, Stockholm ARN, Oslo OSL)
  • TAROM (Bucharest OTP)
  • Virgin Atlantic (London LHR, Manchester MAN)
• Qualifying airlines based in Asia (primary hubs shown in parentheses)
  • China Airlines (Taipei TPE)
  • China Eastern (Shanghai PVG)
  • Garuda Indonesia (Jakarta CGK)
  • Korean Air (Seoul ICN, GMP)
  • Vietnam Airlines (Ho Chi Min City SGN, Hanoi HAN)
  • Xiamen Airlines (Xiamen XMN, Fuzhou FOC)
• Qualifying airlines based elsewhere (primary hubs shown in parentheses)
  • Kenya Airways Nairobi (NBO): Note that Kenya Airways has a 5th freedom flight in Asia: Bangkok BKK to Guangzhou CAN
  • Saudia Airlines (Riyad RUH, Jeddah JED)

Journal Entries (newest to oldest)

Tuesday October 29

I’ve got a lot to update you all on, but the biggest is that I’ve booked all of my flights for this challenge.

Since we announced this challenge a couple of weeks ago, life has been madness. I’ve been visiting Reno, NV since October 20 but have seen pretty much none of the city or surrounding area because every spare minute has been spent looking at possible routings for the challenge. My wife’s been overseas for the last couple of weeks and gets back tonight, so I’d been hoping to get everything booked before she returned so we could enjoy spending time together before I end up jetting off for a couple of weeks myself.

I’d set up a spreadsheet with potential itineraries and ended up making it to 18 different options, each with varying degrees of completeness. Version 17 ended up being the winner and I started booking those flights on Sunday night (October 27).

I came unstuck about halfway through though. I’d found a decent Saudia fare getting me from Europe to Asia, but when I tried booking it the site that I was trying to book through said the fare was no longer available and repriced it about $2,000 higher – ouch!

I was able to find a different Saudia option that was bookable through Expedia, but that had a warning that the route had “Approval Pending”. That made me extremely nervous because that flight was only about two weeks away. I wasn’t concerned about getting a refund if it didn’t get approval, but that choosing this option might risk having to book an expensive last minute fare in the event that Saudia didn’t gain approval.

That was about 4am, so I decided to sleep on it. When waking up, I realized that there was no point in taking foreseeable risks like that, so I looked at other options. I received some helpful suggestions in the comments below, but ended up finding a pretty good alternative routing. That included reduced costs on a different flight for one of the European airlines I need to fly versus what I’d originally booked, so despite my alternative Saudia routing being a little more expensive, overall my spending only increased by something like $25-$30. That was a huge relief, because before going to bed the previous night I was concerned that it might balloon by an extra ~$200.

It took several hours of painstaking attention to detail to make sure I didn’t make any stupid mistakes, but yesterday (Monday October 28) I was able to get the rest of my flights booked, so now I’m all set.

Or am I?

Despite having my flights sorted, there’s still a lot of planning needed. I’m considering booking some backup award flights for Asia in case there’s some kind of issue with one or more of my flights. I currently have 15 of the 16 eligible airlines booked (you only need 15 for the 1 million miles), with the 16th being somewhat easily bookable after my trip has ended. Taking an award flight for one of the legs wouldn’t be ideal as I’d miss out on whichever airline that was due to be, but the situation would still be recoverable.

Another factor will be accommodation. With a former itinerary I wasn’t convinced I’d have an opportunity to stay in many hotels during the challenge. The first week of my challenge will have several nights I need accommodation for, but the second week will be pretty fast-paced, with very few – if any – opportunities to sleep in a bed. I might not win any Style points for that, but hopefully it’ll help me win on Speed.

Another significant element now will be visas. I’m flying into Saudia Arabia on one airline and out on another, so from the brief research I did last night it looks like I’ll need a transit visa even if I’m not leaving the airport itself. My connection times there aren’t horribly tight, but a flight delay of a couple of hours and a persnickety airport agent could make it squeaky bum time. I have tighter connection times in a few other locations, so I need to see what my visa requirements are for those places and if I can apply for those ahead of time rather than waiting precious minutes getting a visa on arrival.

Abandoned hope & dream

In my original post below, I mentioned that I hoped I’d be able to find some of Thomas Dambo’s trolls around the world along the way. I quickly came to the conclusion that wasn’t going to be feasible, so that’s gone out the window.

My overall focus hasn’t changed though – I’m still aiming to be most competitive when it comes to both Speed and Affordability.

On the Speed front, I’m feeling cautiously optimistic about that. The itinerary I’ve pieced together is almost as fast as I could make it. I could’ve conceivably shaved about 18 hours off at the very start of my journey which would’ve put me below a nice overall timing threshold. However, that would’ve left very little margin of error for a couple of important flights, so I decided to give myself a little more leeway to reduce both my risk and stress levels, while still retaining a – hopefully – competitive Speed portion of the challenge.

As for Affordability, I’m mildly confident about this, but I’ve a feeling Nick might beat me on this (Greg’s going for Style points, so I suspect I’ll be spending much less than him). As a reminder, the costs of our cash flights are being included, but we’re also taking into account the Reasonable Redemption Value of the miles used for any additional positioning flights, as well as hotel costs. I’m therefore hoping that even if Nick manages to find cheaper flights than I did for the 15 SkyTeam carriers (or 16 if he goes for them all), I might still spend a teeny bit less than him overall when accounting for those other factors.

Despite my itinerary being booked, that doesn’t mean I won’t need your help anymore. In fact, I imagine that once my trip’s underway I might be in need of greater help as there’s a lot of potential for things to go wrong along the way! More information about the start date of my trip in a future update.

My Focus

As mentioned earlier, our Million Mile Madness journeys will be judged based on SAS – Speed, Affordability, and Style. While it would be nice to travel in style, my main focus will be on the first two factors – Speed and Affordability.

Don’t get me wrong, if there’s some kind of cheap business class fare that can be booked using the Amex Business Platinum’s Pay With Points rebate, I certainly wouldn’t object. However, I’m guessing that I’ll be flying most – or all – of the paid legs in economy and so I’d love to be the one to complete this challenge for the least amount of money.

The speed of the overall journey is also important to me. I had some major reservations about taking part in this challenge because November is my busiest month on GC Galore (one of my own websites) due to all the gift card deals that are around leading up to the holidays. As a result, my wife and I tend to spend a month in the same place in November on our 50 state road trip seeing as much of each day is spent working, hence why we’d booked a month in Vegas. Jetting off around the world and getting little sleep probably isn’t my smartest move, but the EuroBonus Millionaire promotion – and this challenge by extension – was too fun to pass up.

It does mean though that I’d love to not be spending 2+ weeks on this trip, so the shorter the overall travel time, the better.

My Superpower

I’m extremely fortunate because I find it pretty easy to sleep anywhere, even when flying in economy. In fact, when flying economy I’m usually snoozing before the plane has even taken off. Some of the best sleep I’ve ever gotten on a plane was 10 years ago when flying to Australia in economy. I’m therefore hoping that’ll help me get enough rest seeing as my itinerary could be fast-paced with fewer hotel nights than Greg and Nick allow themselves to have.

Hopes & Dreams

Speed and affordability are the primary objectives, but if it’s possible to fit these in with my itinerary, that would be superb.

• Trolls – If you’ve been following Frequent Miler challenges from our first ever challenge – 40K To Far Away – you might remember that I found some of Thomas Dambo’s trolls in both Belgium and Denmark. I’d love to be able to fit in more of them during this trip, but the easiest ones to get to will still likely be a big hassle visiting due to their distances from airports. It therefore won’t make sense if this impacts on the speed of my journey, but if I have a long layover or an overnight in one of these places, it might be doable.
  • Seoul, South Korea – There’s a collection of five trolls at Pyeonggang Land, a two hour drive northeast of Incheon. Google Maps doesn’t give driving directions in South Korea, so I’d have to use either Naver Map or Kakao Map and I’m not sure how good those are when it comes to driving directions in English.
  • France – There’s a troll in Elfy Land, about 1.5 hours outside of Lyon. There’s also a new one in La Forêt Monumentale in Rouen, about two hours northwest of Paris.
  • Copenhagen – Although I found several trolls in Copenhagen during 40K To Far Away, there are many more that I haven’t found there (Copenhagen is where Thomas Dambo is from, hence why there are so many there).
• Lounges – If I want to get this journey done ASAP, it’ll likely require as few nights in hotels as possible. Seeing as I’ll likely be flying in economy for the most part, having access to Priority Pass lounges in each airport I’m flying through would be ideal, especially if they have showers.
• As few flights as possible – While we can take as many additional flights as we need to piece together an itinerary that incorporates 15 SkyTeam airlines, I’d love it if those additional flights were minimal. Even better if there’s somehow a way to only fly 15 legs.
• Visas – For anywhere that I’d be staying overnight, being able to get a visa on arrival would be preferred. Unlike Nick, I don’t already have a Chinese visa and so that means in order to fly any of the China-based airlines, I’d need to transit the airport rather than actually enter the country.
• Getting back to Vegas – If there was some way to have the itinerary land me back in Vegas, all the bettor better. However, that’s not essential as I can find some other way to get back there (hopefully in comfort) using my own miles.

I Need Your Help!

All three of us are seeking reader input on our itineraries, but I could probably do with getting the most assistance of all! I signed up for this challenge against my better judgment as I’m super-busy for the next couple of weeks. That means I have little time to do a lot of research into routings, pricing, etc., so all input will be gratefully received. And remember – the person who’s most helpful will win a prize and if I win the challenge overall, that reader will win the grand prize.

Please therefore share your ideas, tips and tricks in the comments below – thank you

Let the madness begin!

The post Update: All Booked! Stephen’s Million Mile Madness planning journal appeared first on Frequent Miler. Frequent Miler may receive compensation from CHASE. American Express, Capital One, or other partners.