Saudia sent me someone else’s boarding pass (Stephen’s Million Mile Madness trip journal)

From not being able to check in to not being able to get a boarding pass to getting a ‘Not allowed to board’ message to being sent a completely different person’s boarding pass, flying with Saudia has been an adventure.

Wednesday November 13

Where we last left off, I was leaving the club lounge at the InterContinental in Bucharest to head to the airport. From there I caught a TAROM flight to Athens which only cost $63.80. Even better, the flight was so empty that I had an entire row all to myself.

 

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The flight was perfectly comfortable and once at Athens I went and chilled in the Goldair Handling Lounge. I picked this lounge as it had a shower available subject to payment, so I figured I’d freshen up before continuing my journey. That was until I discovered that the lounge wanted to get fresh with my wallet. That ‘subject to payment’ wording referred to a €50 (~$53) fee and so, having showered that morning, I declined that special opportunity, returning to the main part of the lounge to have some dinner.

My flight out in the evening was on a non-SkyTeam carrier – Aegean. I needed to position to Jeddah and Aeroplan had award availability on Aegean for 12,500 points + CA$87.90 (~$63) in economy. While it wasn’t exactly a stellar value, it was still better than the cash prices being charged on that route.

It was at Jeddah where all the weirdness started. Actually, the weirdness started a day or two beforehand when I kept getting an error message when trying to check in for my Saudia flights. Error message on desktop, error message on mobile and error message in their app. After landing in Jeddah on Aegean, I therefore needed to find a Saudia desk to get checked in and get a boarding pass. After getting my visa on arrival (more about that in a mo), I went through the transiting route and got through security without having a boarding pass. There were Saudia desks along the way, but no one attending to them. I asked various airport workers where I could find a desk with someone there and they sent me every which way except to a desk. In the end, I had to leave airside and go back to the main departures area to check in at a regular check in desk.

The desk agent had a hard time getting me checked in and had to get assistance from her supervisor a couple of times. I’ve no idea what the issue was, but I eventually got a boarding pass, albeit one that said ‘Requested Seat Unavailable’ which seemed sub-optimal. She was also only able to give me the boarding pass on this first flight and not for my connecting flight – I’d need to get that in Madinah.

At the gate, I checked with the agent to make sure I did actually have a seat on the plane and he confirmed I did which put my mind at ease, at least for now. When boarding a few minutes later though, that ease drifted away when some kind of message flashed up on the screen in red to the effect of ‘Do Not Board’.

Uh-oh.

However, the agent scrolled through a couple of things, hit a few buttons and told me it was fine – very weird.

On board I discovered my requested seat that was supposedly unavailable was indeed available and was in fact an exit row seat – sweet!

Once we landed in Madinah, I tried getting the boarding pass for my next flight. Seeing as I’d already been checked in, I figured it might be possible to get a copy of it online. Sure enough, when going on the Saudia website I was able to have a copy of the boarding pass both emailed and texted to me.

However, it wasn’t that straightforward. I noticed that the seat number they’d given me would be a window seat (it ended in A) and I’d paid a little extra to sit a little further forward in the cabin in an aisle seat. I went to a check-in agent with my boarding pass on my phone and the seat I’d selected on my laptop. While he was looking into that, he asked if I was traveling alone or with someone else. That seemed like a weird question as surely my booking would only show me, but I confirmed that I was traveling solo.

Based on that question though, it occurred to me what might’ve happened and so I looked closer at the boarding pass that had been texted and emailed to me. Yep – Saudia had somehow sent me the boarding pass for an entirely different passenger as his name was on the boarding pass. The check-in agent gave me a correct paper boarding pass, but it’s a little concerning that I was sent some random dude’s boarding pass after clicking through to their website from my own booking confirmation email.

Now that I had my boarding pass, I was able to head to security. Scanning my boarding pass wouldn’t let me through though because my flight was still more than four hours away. There was a kind security agent though who checked the reason it wasn’t letting me through and opened the gate for me anyway.

With it being so many hours until my flight was due to depart, I thought that the Primeclass lounge (available through Priority Pass) might not let me in as they have a three hour time limit. The lounge wasn’t particularly busy though, so they were happy to let me in where I was able to have some lunch and a refreshing shower. Unlike the lounge in Athens that wanted to charge €50 for the privilege, the Primeclass lounge at Madinah airport offers complimentary showers. There’s only one shower in the men’s bathroom (I presume it’s the same in the women’s bathroom), so if you have a short connection you might want to try taking a shower before having any food.

While the lounge doesn’t have the most comprehensive food selection, there have been several hot options. I arrived in the morning and had a late breakfast, before having some lunch after they updated the lineup.

There’s plenty of seating, especially for how non-busy the lounge has been for the few hours I’ve been here. Lots of the seats have power outlets as well as USB ports for easy charging. If you’d like it even quieter, there’s a peaceful library room that you can rest in.

Going back to the Saudi Arabia visa process, this had been one of the most confusing parts of all my planning. Based on my research and some helpful reader comments below, it seemed like because I have a UK passport, I could get a transit visa which is cheaper than a regular visitor visa. There was very little information about this online though and then when I reached what seemed to be the correct website, the application process was confusing and laborious. The website was in Arabic and so I had Google Chrome translate the page. That worked for the most part, but some sections seemed to be translated confusingly. For example, the section asking about how I’d arrive didn’t have an option for ‘by air’ but did have some other strangely worded option.

Each time I clicked through to the next screen, it would revert back to Arabic and so I’d have to translate the page again. I eventually came to a screen where it wanted me to list every single country I’d visited in the last five years, along with the dates. Everything was so busy in the lead up to the trip that I never ended up finishing that application, figuring I could get a transit visa on arrival.

That wasn’t the case though. There were no transit visa options to be found at the self-service visa kiosks; I checked with an agent too, mentioning that I had a UK passport and she stated that I had to get a regular tourist visa which costs ~$105. That didn’t really put me at a disadvantage budget-wise and Greg and Nick had to do the same, but it’s a shame that the cheaper transit visa wasn’t an option.

Getting the tourist visa was simple though. It was a five minute process and didn’t require me having to list out all the countries I’ve visited since 2019 and when (whew!).

Back to right now, at the time this publishes I should’ve just boarded my flight out of Madinah on to Asia. Which city will I end up in first? Stay tuned here and on Frequent Miler’s Instagram account.

Previous Journal Entries

Tuesday November 12

Yesterday resulted in a fairly early start as I was up and out of the Hilton Charles de Gaulle by about 8:30am. Although the hotel’s location was very convenient and it seemed to be in better condition than when Tim visited a couple of years ago, the breakfast wasn’t great as all the hot options were, in fact, cold options.

At CDG I hopped on a short Air France flight to Amsterdam and was impressed. Despite it being such a short flight, they served a sandwich and a drink to everyone in economy. Unfortunately, I once again struck out with the sandwich choice. I don’t like cheese and on the Virgin Atlantic flight to the UK at the start of the trip that meant I couldn’t eat the cheese sandwich for lunch or the salad covered in cheese or the cheese and crackers. Sure enough, the Air France snack was a cheese sandwich.

I was very impressed by the cabin crew though as the AF flight attendants were friendly AF. All of them were extremely warm, smiling, hard working and personable. The economy seat was also wider and more comfortable than the Air Europa flight I’d been on the previous day.

My layover at Amsterdam airport was only due to be just over an hour and the flight out of Paris was a little delayed setting off, so I was initially concerned about making it to my next flight in time as I wasn’t sure how far across the airport I’d have to traipse. Thankfully it wasn’t far and our flight still managed to land a little earlier than the scheduled arrival time despite the late take off, so along the way I had time to stop in at the Aspire lounge that’s part of Priority Pass. 30 minutes there gave me plenty of time to have some lunch before heading on to my gate which proved to be a life hunger saver.

That next flight was to Bucharest on KLM. Similar to Air France, the seat was slightly wider than expected, plus it seemed to be automatically reclined a little further than most airplane seats. That was fantastic as it made it easier to snooze on the flight without needing to actually recline the seat back towards the person behind me.

The staff on this flight were friendly too, but I once again managed to get the sandwich bad luck. Based on what was written on the sandwich wrapper, KLM serves either cheese or egg sandwiches on their flights in economy; guess which one they were serving that day In addition to the cheese sandwich, they also provided some kind of chocolate cake snack. I went to take a photo of it but dropped it on the floor and it rolled back under my chair, so I’ve no idea if it was tasty or not.

After landing in Bucharest, I took a Bolt ride (thanks for the tip Jules) to my hotel downtown. There was pretty bad rush hour traffic, but my driver kindly decided to drive down the bus lane for some stretches of it to shave a decent amount of time off the trip.

My hotel was the InterContinental Athénée Palace Bucharest for my most luxurious stay of the trip. I booked it using an IHG free night certificate which was redeemable up to 40,000 points. As luck would have it, the award price for the night was exactly 40,000 points, so I managed to both maximize the cert while not having to top it up with points. The cash rate was ~$300, so it was a pretty good redemption as the cert came from my IHG Premier card that has a $99 annual fee.

I don’t have an Ambassador membership, but do have Diamond status with IHG. That status meant they proactively upgraded me to a junior suite before I’d arrived. While the term ‘junior’ suite is probably correct as it wasn’t an enormous suite, I was expecting a bedroom with a couch acting as a living area. That wasn’t the case though – it was a one bedroom suite.

 

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In addition to having Diamond status, at the start of 2023 I picked a lounge membership as one of my IHG Milestone Rewards. Seeing as I selected that at the start of 2023, it was valid for all of 2023 as well as all of 2024. Unfortunately we’ve not stayed in any IHG properties with a lounge during that entire time, so I loved finally having a chance to make use of it before the end of the year.

The evening lounge offering wasn’t quite as good as the lunch provided at the Madrid Marriott Auditorium I’d stayed at a couple of nights before, but it was significantly better than the Hilton CDG’s lounge offering the night before. There were several hot options (teriyaki salmon, samosas and chicken skewers), as well as other small bites, chips, nuts, desserts, fruit, etc, plus soda, wine, spirits, etc.

I didn’t make it out into Bucharest at 2am like Greg did as I’d booked a 2.5 hour free walking tour to explore the city this morning before heading to the airport. That was a great idea except for one thing – this morning it was raining/snowing in Romania’s capital. I was due to head straight to the airport once the tour ended, so being in soaking clothing – or carrying wet clothing around with me for the next few days – wasn’t an appealing option. Instead, I decided to stay warm and dry at the InterContinental, resting up for fast-paced travel in the coming days. My wife and I are moving back to the UK in the new year, so Bucharest will definitely be on our list of quick breaks to take.

I’m now about to leave the InterContinental’s lounge to head back to Bucharest airport. I’m flying TAROM to a different European city, then I’ll catch a non-SkyTeam positioning flight in order to then take a Saudia Airlines flight later this evening. This is the start of a five day stretch with – in theory – no hotel nights as I’ll be hopping from one flight to another, hopefully getting a little downtime in some airport lounges along the way. Having said that, I do have a backup option if I need a hotel room for a few hours at one particular airport halfway through.

Monday November 11

Yesterday was another somewhat slow-paced travel day, but the way things worked out it was hard to do anything stylish.

After checking out of the lovely Madrid Marriott Auditorium, I headed to the airport on the hotel’s free shuttle bus to take an Air Europa flight to Paris.

Air Europa doesn’t fly to Paris Charles de Gaulle; instead, they fly to Paris-Orly which is on the opposite side of the city. My flight out this morning leaves from Charles de Gaulle and I didn’t want to have to traipse across the city early in the morning, so instead I took the 1.5 hour train journey from Orly to CDG yesterday afternoon/early evening and booked a stay at the Hilton Charles de Gaulle at the airport.

Tim stayed there a couple of years ago and wasn’t impressed, so I’d been a little apprehensive about booking a stay there if I wanted to earn any kind of style points. However, comments on FlyerTalk suggested at least some rooms had been renovated since then, plus the executive lounge had reopened, so I figured it would be worth it if for no other reason than for research purposes.

I have Hilton Diamond status and got upgraded to an executive room with lounge access. Despite only having myself listed on the reservation, it seemed like they anticipated me having a lot of company based on the two beds made up in addition to the king bed.

The room itself is perfectly nice and for plane spotters there’s a nice view of the airport (albeit not of the runway).

Last night we did a livestream from our various locations and, just before that, I caught up on the guys’ Instagram Stories, only to discover that Greg was at exactly the same hotel as me! By the time we’d finished that video it was 1am local; he has an early morning flight out and so it appears that we’re going to be two ships contestants that pass in the night.

My first flight today has me up somewhat early, but probably not quite early enough to have breakfast with Greg (I scheduled this post last night, so perhaps we’ll get lucky). That’s the first of two SkyTeam carriers I’ll be flying today which will help me catch up with Greg’s tally, although I’ll still be behind seeing as he’s already completed all the European airlines needed as part of this challenge.

I’m looking forward to my destination today for several reasons. One is that I’ve never visited this city. Another is that I’m getting in at a somewhat reasonable time late afternoon/early evening and will get to enjoy my most stylish hotel stay of the entire trip. That should also give me a decent opportunity to explore the city a little in the evening and/or morning before continuing my journey. From there things are going to get super-busy, so fingers crossed that this stylish stay gets me some much needed rest in advance of that.

Sunday November 10

If you’ve read Greg’s and/or Nick’s last journal entries, you’ll know that the three of us somehow all ended up on exactly the same flight yesterday from London Heathrow to Copenhagen.

Our layovers were varying lengths – Greg had the shortest, Nick had the longest and mine was Goldilocks (just right). When I first started researching my trip, I realized that quite a few countries I’d likely be visiting had trolls built by Thomas Dambo. I soon came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t be possible to see many – if any – of those, so I was glad that all of us had a layover long enough to head to Christiana to meet Green George – the 50th troll built by Thomas Dambo. This was, coincidentally, about the 50th of Thomas Dambo’s trolls that I’ve seen, but it was the first time Greg and Nick had ever seen one in person, so it was fun getting to share that with them.

We then stopped at a cafe for several pastries to share between us before Greg and I headed back to the airport.

Copenhagen airport is a surprisingly quiet airport. Not in terms of the number of people traveling through the airport; just that it’s audibly very quiet even when there’s people around. I noticed a similar thing in one of the lounges too; Greg and I went to the Aspire lounge (available through Priority Pass) while we waited for our flights and I managed to have a good nap there as it was so quiet.

My flight out of Copenhagen yesterday evening was a positioning flight on a non-SkyTeam carrier. I booked a nonstop flight on Iberia Express to Madrid for only $89.20 as that would position me for my flight later today on a carrier that I do need to fly as part of the challenge. If you know where airlines for this challenge are based, you’ll probably have a pretty good idea about which airline I’m flying this afternoon.

I stayed overnight at the Madrid Marriott Auditorium for a very reasonable €130 (~$140). I booked directly with Marriott after clicking through from Capital One Shopping. That portal was offering me a higher targeted cashback rate of 8%, so I’ll be earning $10.13. I was also able to apply a Nightly Upgrade Award to get upgraded to a one bedroom suite with executive lounge access (I already have lounge access with Titanium status, so that part was moot). The rate for the suite was ~$325, so it was awesome being able to add a little bit of style for no additional cost.

Here’s a walkthrough of my suite:

 

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I arrived too late last night to enjoy the executive lounge and decided to have breakfast at the buffet downstairs, but I’m finishing off this journal update from the lounge and am impressed with the spread available at midday on a Sunday considering how sparse many hotel lounges are in the US.

Anyway, it’s time for me to pack up my stuff and head to the airport. Any guesses which city I’ll be heading to next?

Saturday November 9

We left off the last journal entry in the early hours of the morning at JFK. After spending a few hours working in Terminal 4 (the 24 hour Primeclass lounge wouldn’t let me in more than three hours before my flight), I stopped in at JFK’s Centurion Lounge. That was my third one in less than 24 hours as I’d also visited the Centurion Lounges at Las Vegas and Los Angeles airports.

After having a filling breakfast in the lounge, I made my way over to the gate to take a flight across the Atlantic. As you might expect, I flew on Virgin Atlantic seeing as that’s one of the SkyTeam carriers I’ll need to pick up as part of the challenge and the JFK-LHR route is one of the cheapest – if not the cheapest – options.

There had been some days in the coming week where the fare dropped as low as $198, but my flight was $243.30 as yesterday’s flight lined up much better with the rest of the flights I found for my overall itinerary. It’s also a bit of a rarity – a daytime flight from the US to London. Most transatlantic flights heading east leave in the evening and arrive in London in the morning, but this Virgin Atlantic flight departs JFK at 8:20am and arrives in London at 8:10pm. That can be a fantastic option if you tend to suffer from jetlag when travelling east as it means you can arrive, make your way to the hotel and head to bed.

The flight on Virgin Atlantic was perfectly fine, but not exactly the most style. I’d bought the cheapest fare available which meant I didn’t get to pick my own seat unless I wanted to pay a fee. With the flight being full, that meant I got to enjoy the 6-7 hours in a middle seat.

They served a small meal about an after takeoff and I was a little unfortunate with this. It was a (somewhat dry) ciabatta roll, but it contained cheese and tomato and it was the only option. I don’t like cheese, so I just ate the packet of potato chips and chocolate bar – thankfully I’d had a decent breakfast in the Centurion lounge beforehand.

A quick tip – if you’re traveling on Virgin Atlantic and want to watch TV shows or movies, bring along your own headphones that can connect via 3.5mm jack. The headphones on the flight were poor – not much better than you’d have gotten with a Walkman back in the 80s – so it was hard following movies without the subtitles on. That said, it probably didn’t help that I was watching A Quiet Place: Day One!

Despite flying in economy, I used my superpower to get several hours of deep sleep while sitting ever-so-slightly reclined, aided by the fact that I’d stayed up overnight at JFK.

Before landing we were served another meal that was more substantial. There was the option between chicken and rice or vegetarian pasta, so I picked the chicken and rice option. This was flavorful enough and didn’t contain cheese which was appreciated seeing as the side salad was covered in shredded cheese and another part of the meal was cheese and crackers.

My flight out of Heathrow leaves this morning, so I got a hotel by the airport for overnight. There were numerous good options, but I settled on the Premier Inn London Heathrow Terminal 4. My flight landed at Terminal 3, but there’s a free train you can take to Terminal 4. There’s then a covered walkway connecting the terminal to the hotel, so I walked over there rather than taking the Hotel Hoppa bus.

I picked this hotel because Premier Inn is a solid hotel chain in the UK that tends to provide excellent value – it was only £54 for the night which is ~$70. That’s a bargain considering its location that’s walkable from the airport and the fact that its rooms are clean, comfortable and stay nice and dark. There’s a restaurant on site, as well as a Costa Coffee, so I had a filling meal before heading back to my room.

I got another four hours of heavy sleep and woke up refreshed before my alarm went off. I’m writing this just before heading downstairs to have breakfast which isn’t automatically included in your room rate. After 15 years of living in the US, whenever I head back to the UK I always take whatever opportunity I can get to have proper bacon (i.e. back bacon), not to mention proper sausages and proper baked beans (although I will say that the US has converted me to your version of baked beans rather than the UK’s Heinz variety that’s much more tomatoey).

After breakfast it’ll be time for a quick shower before walking back to the airport to hop on my next flight to somewhere in Europe. Where will I be flying to? A quick hint – it’ll be somewhere I’ve visited briefly on a past challenge, but I’ll be seeing something different during the layover.

Friday November 8

I’m currently writing this at 1:30am ET from Terminal 4 at JFK. I left Las Vegas this morning, flying to JFK via Los Angeles for the start of my trip.

Despite this being a domestic flight and needing to get Delta at some point on my travels, I didn’t book those flights on Delta as there was a significantly better option using miles. For only 21,500 American Airlines AAdvantage miles + $5.60, I was able to fly first class from LAS to LAX, then Flagship business class from LAX to JFK. That meant the transcontinental leg was in a lie-flat business seat; despite it being a daytime flight, I was able to get at least a couple of hours sleep on the flight which was useful as I was planning on staying awake at JFK to work on stuff after getting in at midnight.

As a reminder, one of the three areas we’re competing on for this challenge is Affordability. Any time that we use miles for positioning flights during the challenge we’re accounting for them by applying the Reasonable Redemption Value (RRV) and adding it to our total cash spend. Seeing as the RRV for American Airlines is 1.3cpp (cents per point), my LAS-LAX-JFK flight is adding $285.10 to my spend ($279.50 for the miles and $5.60 for the taxes and fees). Flying from Las Vegas to New York in economy on Delta would’ve cost ~$280 in order for it to be an eligible fare for the purposes of the SAS EuroBonus Millionaire challenge. Although that means I still need to fly Delta, spending effectively the same amount of money to fly very comfortably across the country in first and business class made far more sense than flying in economy and should get me some kind of credit in the Style scoring too.

Flying in Flagship business class from LAX to JFK is one of the handful of domestic business class flights that gets you access to the American Airlines Flagship Lounge at LAX, so I took advantage of that quickly before my flight too.

My routing also gave an opportunity to do something that might earn me additional Style points, but I won’t be able to reveal that until my next journal entry as I won’t be able to complete that part for another few hours.

Seeing as I’ve flown to JFK, I’m sure many of you will be able to guess which flight I’ll be taking next based on the airlines we all need to fly on as part of this challenge. Stay tuned for more about that in my next update.

Tuesday November 5

A few days ago I was still looking at my accommodation options. I now have four of my five hotels booked, but still have other stuff to sort out too and would love your input if you have any wisdom.

Visas

I’m flying in to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on one airline and out on another. I need to get a transit visa and would love to get that sorted out before I leave to minimize issues on arrival.

However, when trying to research this I haven’t been able to find a way to apply for a transit visa in advance. I can apply for a visa to enter the country, but I’m not planning on leaving the airport and a visa to enter the country is quite pricey.

I’m guessing we have at least some readers who’ve been in this situation before (i.e. arriving in Saudi Arabia on one airline and departing on another). Were you able to apply for a transit visa in advance, or is a transit visa on arrival the only option?

Ground Transportation

One of the other things I’m looking into is ground transportation in Europe. Jules helpfully suggested using Bolt while I’m in Bucharest, so I’ve redownloaded that to my phone. Funnily enough, a day or two ago I received a targeted email from Bolt offering me 10% off my next five rides, so that’ll come in handy.

My biggest issue at the moment regarding ground transportation is working out the best way to get from Paris-Orly airport to Paris Charles de Gaulle airport. I’ll be there on Sunday which not only means reduced service, but some train services will be replaced by buses. I’d rather minimize confusion because even though I got a B for my French GCSE at school in the UK, it’s been almost 30 years and so my French is now rustier than our 2004 Toyota Corolla.

It looks like I can take the Magical Shuttle for €25 which goes from Paris-Orly to Disneyland Paris Hotel Santa Fe, then from there to Charles de Gaulle. That feels like the most straightforward option, but do you know of a better transportation choice that’s not likely to be significantly more expensive? I know I could use something like Uber, but I’m guessing that’ll cost substantially more than €25.

I’d also love recommendations for getting to airport hotels in Madrid. Some hotels offer a shuttle service, but others – like a couple of IHG properties – don’t have a shuttle after 11pm which is when I’ll be arriving. Is Uber the most ubiquitous rideshare service in Madrid, or are there other options like Bolt that are better/cheaper?

If you have any tips for these ground transportation questions or the Saudi visa situation, I’d love to hear them!

Saturday November 2

Greg, Nick and I are keeping our itineraries secret from each other, so we have no clue how we compare to each other when it comes to Speed, Affordability and Style. What I can disclose though is that I set off in less than a week – Thursday November 7.

Although I got all my flights booked a few days ago, I still have much that I need to sort out. I think there’s at least one transit visa I can apply for in advance, so I want to do that now rather than relying on getting a visa on arrival.

I have several potentially – and definitely! – tight connection times, particularly in Asia. I’m therefore considering booking a few positioning flights with miles that I can cancel in the hopeful eventuality that they’re unneeded. My biggest risk right now – and probably each of our biggest risks – is that we miss one flight which has a knock-on effect with making our other flights. Missing a flight also carries the risk that we end up flying on fewer than 15 SkyTeam airlines for the Scandinavian Airlines promotion, but I have an ace up my sleeve. If I do happen to miss one of those flights and need to use a backup flight on a completely different airline, I can fairly easily fly another eligible airline once my trip is over to still hit the 15 airlines needed. I’d rather not have to do that as it’ll detract from my Speed and Affordability, but I’m glad that I was able to put together an itinerary where I have that backup option if necessary.

Something else I need to do is book some accommodation along the way. My week in Europe is slightly slower paced, so I have several nights to book there. My week in Asia is much more hectic and so I only have one hotel night I need to book there.

I’d therefore love to get some suggestions for where to stay. Being realistic, I’m going to have to work the entire time that I’m traveling, so I’m probably not going to have time – or energy – to do any sightseeing. Thankfully 60% of the cities I need to book hotels for are ones I’ve visited in the past, so I won’t feel like I’m missing out as much. Accommodation tips will therefore be particularly appreciated, especially if they’re easy to get to from the airports I’ll be flying in to and out of.

FWIW, the status levels I have are Hyatt Globalist, Hilton Diamond, Marriott Titanium and IHG Diamond. I have an IHG free night certificate plus a lounge membership from a Milestone Reward, so I’d love an opportunity to make use of that lounge access somewhere along the way as I’ve had that reward for almost two years and haven’t used it a single time.

I also have five Marriott Nightly Upgrade Awards about to expire; I don’t currently have any free night certificates and would prefer not to burn the limited points I have, but a cheap Marriott property in cash (or a low points redemption) could be of interest. I also have a couple of Hyatt category 1-4 certificates I could redeem.

Here’s where I need to book stays:

• London Heathrow – I’m from the UK and my parents live in the southeast. I was therefore originally going to ask them if they could pick me up from Heathrow, I’d stay with them, then they could take me back to Heathrow the next day. Figures that they’d already planned their own vacation for the start of November, so I’m just going to stick to a Heathrow airport hotel as I arrive in the evening and leave the next morning. The Hyatt Place Heathrow Airport was looking like a likely contender when I checked a few days ago as it was only £89 (~$115), but do you have a different Heathrow airport hotel that’s good value with cash and/or points that’s easy to get to on the Hotel Hoppa or another bus?
• Madrid – I’m due to arrive in Madrid late at night, but won’t need to check out of the hotel until about midday the following day. Seeing as I’d mainly be sleeping there, it doesn’t seem worth spending too much (whether points or cash) on something lavish unless it’s super convenient (e.g. right next to the airport).
• Paris – I arrive in Paris at a much more reasonable time in the afternoon. I’m flying in to Paris-Orly and flying out of Charles de Gaulle, so I’m not as fussed about staying in a hotel right by one of those airports. I’d love it if the hotel has easy transportation links to both airports though and particularly CDG as I’ll have to head there early (for me) in the morning.
• Bucharest – I’ve never been to Romania, so I have zero clue about the hotel market there. I have an almost 24 hour layover as I arrive late afternoon and don’t leave until late afternoon the next day. Staying at a Marriott or Hyatt where I can get a guaranteed late checkout would therefore be ideal, but not a deal breaker as I could always work in the lobby of whichever hotel if needed.
• Ho Chi Minh City – From Bucharest it’s going to be a savage ride. I hadn’t paid attention to it when putting together my itinerary, but I have a five day stretch where I have zero overnight stays anywhere and relatively short layovers. I therefore won’t get to sleep in a bed until I reach Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. Thankfully I arrive at a reasonable time in the afternoon and don’t leave until late morning the next day. At that point I’m likely going to be exhausted, despite my superpower. A hotel near the airport where I can rely on the club lounge for meals and crash in a comfortable bed is therefore primarily what I’m looking for.

Ho Chi Minh City is the final hotel night I need on my trip. Do you have any good ideas about places I should stay in the above five cities? Please let me know in the comments below.

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.

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)

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!

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