Booking the SAS Millionaire Promotion: 7 Tips I Learned

After leaving the Star Alliance in October 2024, the Scandinavian Airline System (SAS) celebrated its full integration into the SkyTeam. Knowing only three major airline alliances exist is essential if you’re new here, so when one airline jumps ship, it’s a huge deal!

SAS wanted to ensure everyone knew they were joining the SkyTeam, so they launched the craziest promotion in recent memory: 1,000,000 SAS EuroBonus Miles for anyone who flies on 15 SkyTeam airlines before December 31st, 2024.

As you can tell by the title, I will be one of these crazy passengers who will take on the challenge! But it was far from simple sorting out a fun itinerary that would be reasonable to stay on track with, and I learned seven key tips throughout the booking process.

What is the SAS Millionaire Promotion?

As I explained in the intro, this promotion awards 1,000,000 SAS EuroBonus Miles to any brave soul who wants to fly around the world in economy class with at least 14 layovers. You don’t need to fly in economy class, but business class fares would be prohibitively expensive for most. If you can afford to fly around the world in business class, you probably have nearly 1,000,000 miles anyway! 

That’s not all that it is, though. You can also earn bonus miles if you fly 5 or 10 SkyTeam airlines. The full details are:

• Fly on 5 SkyTeam Airlines and earn 10,000 EuroBonus Miles
• Fly on 10 SkyTeam Airlines and earn 100,000 EuroBonus Miles
• Fly on 15 SkyTeam Airlines and earn 1,000,000 EuroBonus Miles

Of course, there are a few “gotcha’s.” Namely, you must earn or redeem SAS EuroBonus miles on each flight, meaning travelers can’t simply book Basic Economy fare class and cross off an airline. The other key is that the operating airline counts, not the marketing airline. In simpler terms, if I bought a Delta flight from Virgin Atlantic’s website, that would count as Delta, not Virgin Atlantic, as part of the promotion. 

Lastly, some SkyTeam airlines aren’t able to input an SAS loyalty number tied to your boarding pass as SAS is new to the alliance. SAS has listed December 20th as the last date you can claim miles from a flight retroactively, and you must wait 8 days after a flight to submit a claim.

To be ultra-safe, travelers only have until December 12th to complete their last flight and avoid sweating any IT issues.

Why I Decided to Participate in the SAS Millionaire Promotion

The short answer is that it’s fun! And I love a challenge. 

What sent me over the edge was that an employer for a freelance project booked me a flight home with Delta from Halifax to NYC. This economy ticket was a “T” fare class, meaning I could choose to earn SAS miles and cross off one carrier on the list for free, with only 14 more to go!

However, when I reviewed the cost of flying the 14 other airlines, it came to about $3,500 CAD, which is a lot of money to spend, but considering the reward, it very clearly became worth it.  SAS EuroBonus miles can be redeemed in chunks of 100,000 Miles for a round-trip from North America to Scandinavia in business class.

The taxes and fees are also super reasonable at $77.60 CAD. If we do the math and divide my cost of accruing the miles, $3,500, by the total miles I will (hopefully) receive, 1,000,000, my acquisition cost for each mile becomes $0.0035 CAD or less than ½ of a penny per mile. Each round trip to Scandinavia in business class cost me $427.60 CAD ($350 + $77.60 taxes and fees). 

The cash price for this same itinerary is currently selling for $5,611 CAD, which means I get a 92% discount, and I can get that 92% discount up to ten times because I will have 1,000,000 miles available.

There’s also a non-zero chance that these miles will eventually turn into Air France KLM Flying Blue miles as Air France purchased a nearly 20% stake in SAS. Considering the very common Flying Blue Promo Rewards from Canadian airports, I would also be happy to end up with a bunch of those miles. 

Booking the flights for this challenge took MUCH longer than I expected. I probably spent 7 hours changing flights and piecing together different routings. I had four tabs on a spreadsheet featuring different routes and departing dates. Once I finally had a reasonably priced routing and a reasonable timeline, going through and manually booking nineteen different itineraries took me another 3 hours.

Ensuring I knew the fare class I was purchasing was vital to completing this challenge successfully. This whole process pushed my travel skills and knowledge as far as ever. Naturally, I learned many excellent tips that can apply to everyday travel, not just crazy mileage running tactics.

7 Tips I Learned While Booking My Itinerary For The SAS Millionaire Promotion

What I Learned About Google Flights

Google Flights is a fantastic tool that we’re fortunate to have free access to. Its incredible features deserve a dedicated article, but for now, I want to highlight the Explore function that helped me discover many cheaper alternatives to my original plans.

When you first head to Google Flights, you’ll be met with a screen that usually lists the city you’re in and a blank box, as shown below.

If you type in a specific region, like Europe, you’ll see many results, and you can filter by airline alliance. In the below image, I’ve filtered by the SkyTeam alliance.

That’s helpful, but I wanted to cross off Virgin Atlantic with this first flight as they only fly long hauls out of Europe, and I needed to spend some time hopping around within Europe. I got around this limitation of searching only by alliance by first selecting a flight I knew Virgin Atlantic flew, like Boston to London, and then selecting Virgin as the only airline.

After doing this, I could type “Anywhere” or “Europe” into the destination box, and Google Flights would show me only flights operated or sold by Virgin Atlantic.

You can use this for regular travel by cutting costs with Air Canada if you don’t care where you start your European adventure but still want to try and maintain a level of status like Aeroplan 50K.

What I Learned About Expedia

Generally, we don’t recommend booking with Online Travel Agencies as they come with a host of potential problems. However, one of the significant parts of this promotion was buying the correct fare code, as not every ticket earns miles with SAS EuroBonus.

Expedia surprisingly does an excellent job of displaying fare codes in an easy-to-see format, making this less challenging than I thought.

Before booking, I could cross-reference this with SAS’s partner page to ensure that I would earn miles and be able to cross another airline off the list.

I ended up booking quite a few flights through Expedia just to have some “backup” if I have any crediting issued with SAS, at least, I can easily show I booked correctly. While I would always recommend booking directly with the airlines, using this Expedia search function to see the fare code easily is a great way to know which program to credit your flight to.

We talk highly of Where to Credit, which allows travelers to see which airline fare codes earn the most frequent flyer miles. For example, if you can find any inexpensive Delta or Air France “J” fares, Virgin Atlantic pays 400% miles of the distance flown. This means a 4,000-mile flight on a J ticket would result in 16,000 Virgin Atlantic miles!

What I Learned About ITA Matrix

Like Google Flights, ITA Matrix also deserves its own dedicated article, but I want to focus specifically on the ability to search for cheap fares that fall into specific buckets. When Expedia failed me or only showed ineligible fare classes to be booked through them, I turned to ITA Matrix, which I had never used before taking on this challenge.

ITA Matrix looks very industrial and intimidating, but some helpful tips are included if you know what to look for. For example, extension codes may not seem like anything relevant you’ve ever heard of before, but this is where you can plug in a specific fare class to search for.

You even get specific directions on how to do it by clicking on this question mark.

Using the extension “F bc=y” or any other fare letter category you’re looking for is a huge timesaver to know that you’re buying the right fare that earns miles. Using this tool, you can search in advance for those high-mileage-paying fare classes and even search over a 2-month view.

What I Learned About Aeroplan’s IT

Air Canada Aeroplan doesn’t have fantastic information technology (IT), but we’ve been aware of this for quite some time as the Family Sharing feature has been disabled for nearly 2 years. But this was a glaring hole in their IT that really surprised me. 

I was working to get from Europe to the Middle East for a reasonable price, as I needed to fly Saudia Airlines. I’ll be heading there from Bucharest, and I looked up on FlightConnections that I could use Turkish Airlines with a stop in Istanbul.

I searched Aeroplan and found a great deal, only 20,000 points and $85 CAD in taxes and fees, and this included a leg with lie-flat Turkish Airlines business class!

I carried on with my planning and thought nothing of it until I considered a different routing through Abu Dhabi and came across this pricing from Bucharest. Not only did the price double, but economy class was more expensive by 5,000 points!

These cities are pretty close on the map, which prompted me to check the Aeroplan Award Chart. According to the chart, both flight paths should cost 25,000 points in Business Class, so why we’ve got one at 20,000 points and another at 45,000 points is baffling.

The lesson here is that things don’t always price as they should, sometimes in your favor, and other times not. If you see something priced in your favor, book it immediately! Aeroplan continues to have a flexible 24-hour booking period, so you have time to consider whether taking the trip makes sense while taking advantage of the excellent price.

What I Learned About British Airways Reward Flights

British Airways Avios is known for having absurdly high taxes and fees on their award flights, but this generally applies only to long-haul business class flights. Once in Europe, you can get away with paying as little as $1 in taxes and fees per person. That’s not always the best deal though, as there’s some interesting math that takes place on the checkout page.

I figured this out when I was making my way into Scandinavia after that Virgin Atlantic flight I mentioned earlier. After finding a flight you’d like to book, you’re presented with the standard pricing, which uses the most Avios and the least cash.

However, clicking on more pricing options will reveal the arbitrage opportunity of adjusting the combination of Avios and cash used for the booking.

I had to do a double-take as the numbers from British Airways were seemingly random. If you pay $20 more in taxes, you’ll save 2,000 Avios, essentially like purchasing Avios for 1 cent each, which is fantastic. 

However, spending $40 more in taxes will save 4,500 Avios, meaning you’re “purchasing” Avios for $0.0089, or less than a penny! This is definitely the best option, as if you choose to pay $71 in taxes and fees, you’ll only save an additional 1,050 Avios bringing your “purchase price” up to 1.3 cents per Avios.

We will see how long these loopholes last, but in the meantime, do your math when checking out for a British Airways award flight!

What I Learned About Double Checking Award Availability

This should probably have been in my 10 Mistakes to Avoid article, but I made the silly mistake of not double-checking award availability before transferring points. This lesson for me occurred when I was finding a path out of Jeddah to Asia, and I wanted to book a direct flight from Medinah to Kuala Lumpur on Malaysia Airlines.

After checking all of the Oneworld programs’ partner availability, I found that business class pricing was quite expensive with miles. But I did find that Cathay Pacific Asia Miles had 5 economy seats with $70 in taxes and fees available almost every day, key word there is almost…

I quickly transferred some US Amex Membership Rewards at a 1:1 ratio and then went to book. Of course, on the day I needed it, no flights existed.

This was a major problem, as I had already started to book the cash tickets for the challenge and needed to do some quick thinking. Luckily, the next day there was a flight that ran through Doha with Qatar Airways, and it would still get me to Kuala Lumpur *just* in time to connect to Jakarta with KLM. The only issue with this flight is that it came with a painful $242 CAD in taxes and fees, triple what I originally planned on paying.

As I didn’t want to leave the miles stranded there, I sucked up the extra taxes and fees and booked the award. The lesson here is don’t be like me and assume economy awards are readily available every day!

What I Learned About Wyndham Cash & Points Redemptions

Wyndham Rewards is a program more Canadians interact with than World of Hyatt, as there are cheap Wyndham properties everywhere, like Days Inn, Ramada, etc. I had a stash of Wyndham points that were due to expire as I hadn’t stayed at any of their properties recently but previously did for work quite a few times.

While it didn’t make sense to redeem only points, I was able to use just 1,500 points to save $20 CAD on a hotel bill, meaning each point is worth 1.3 cents, an excellent value and higher than the 1 cent per point if I simply used 7,500 points to book outright.

This also counts as activity in my account, so my remaining Wyndham points won’t expire until mid-2026. The lesson here is that it’s always worth collecting points in a program, even if you don’t think you’ll use them, because you never know when they’ll have value. In the worst case, your points become orphaned, and you transfer them to a different loyalty program just before expiry.

Conclusion

Booking this SAS Million Mile challenge pushed my skills to the limit, and here’s some proof that no matter how much you know, there’s always more to learn. 

However, all that effort is likely worth it as the SAS Millionaire promotion will go down as one of the most rewarding opportunities of the 2020s. I look forward to writing about how I used these miles and what their final value turned out to be!