SAS Millionaire Promotion: A Review by the Numbers

The SAS EuroBonus Millionaire promotion will likely go down as one of the most rewarding promotions of the 2020s. If not the most rewarding, it will certainly be the craziest. You can read more details about the promotion in my first post about booking the SAS Millionaire challenge, but the promotion’s core is simple: Fly 15 SkyTeam airlines and earn 1,000,000 SAS EuroBonus miles.

I’ve now finished my trek around the world and have some interesting and astonishing numbers about the journey to share, along with a few anecdotes.

SAS Millionaire Review by the Numbers

2: Number of Flight Delays

This was the most amazing number to me. With so many flights on separate tickets, I was sure something would go wrong. Luckily for me, nothing went wrong on a huge scale! 

I had an Air France flight incur a 45-minute delay, but it was the first of two flights on a connected itinerary. The delay meant I had only 50 minutes to connect within the Schengen area at Paris’ CDG airport, and I had to transfer on a bus between terminals. 

CDG is exceptionally organized, at least in my experience, and I even had time to slip into an Air France lounge, thanks to my Flying Blue Gold status I acquired via status match this summer, before boarding my short hop to Frankfurt.

My second delay occurred in Doha, where I was basking in the Al Safwa First Class lounge before my Malaysia Airlines Business Class flight. I could access the First Class lounge rather than the Business Class lounge because I had arrived on a ‘First Class’ flight from Medina (MED). Qatar Airways brands its regional business class product as first class, even though the seat is similar to the business class seat on Air Canada 737s.

The Malaysia Airlines flight ended up with a 2-hour delay due to the incoming aircraft being late, but I had scheduled a 25-hour break from flying in Kuala Lumpur, so I was happy to enjoy an extra glass of Port in Al Safwa.

In the award travel space, we talk a lot about irregular operations (IRROPS), how to avoid them, or how to use them to your advantage. However, it’s important to remember that IRROPS have irregular in the name because they don’t happen often, and this trip proves that point. While you need to be aware that IRROPS can happen, it’s not something to plan for in your trip.

12: Nights in a Hotel

Speaking of irregular operations, I had planned to run into an issue or two, and I scheduled the second half of my trip much more relaxed than the start. If I had any problems at the start, I could cancel some of these hotel nights and re-book myself on overnight flights to get back on track with my itinerary. That didn’t happen, so I ended up with a much more comfortable journey than I anticipated!

When booking, I used points whenever possible, partly to minimize my out-of-pocket expenses, mainly because staying at chain hotels gave me complimentary breakfast. Hilton Honors and Marriott Bonvoy have relatively attainable elite status to reward loyal members, and the breakfast benefits are generally better outside North America.

World of Hyatt is the most elusive major hotel loyalty program to offer complimentary breakfast, gatekeeping this perk until you stay 60 nights in a calendar year or have access to a Guest of Honor award. Luckily for me, my wife is a World of Hyatt Globalist member thanks to a status challenge with BILT last year, and I used one of her Guest of Honor awards to enjoy an excellent breakfast at the Park Hyatt Guangzhou. 

On top of breakfast benefits, I was treated to some excellent complimentary snacks in Kuala Lumpur during an “Elite Happy Hour.” While this was rare and hard to plan for, it was greatly appreciated!

15: Days Total on the Road

My total itinerary took 16 days, as I ‘started’ the challenge by using my SAS loyalty number on a Delta flight an employer paid for a few weeks prior.

However, the main journey around the globe took 15 days to complete. I could have been more aggressive in planning, but I was exhausted after the trip. To be fair to myself, I stopped for two nights in Shanghai to visit a friend. So I could have easily taken a day off the total by continuing on my trend of: wake up, eat, fly, eat, sleep.

If you’re reading this in the short window that still exists to complete the challenge, 14 days is a busy schedule, but if you can slot in a few more overnight business class tickets or spend extra cash on specific economy flights, it can be done faster! 

I also wanted to see some of the cities in which I had a long stop. This is going to be a story I tell for years, and I wanted to be able to talk about more than airports, airplanes, and airport lounges. Some of my highlights included:

26: Segments Flown

I didn’t consider the total number of flights until I was finished booking the whole itinerary, and it wasn’t until my mother-in-law asked how many flights I was taking that I counted it all up. Truthfully, I was shocked when I saw that it turned out to be 26!

I posted a video on my Instagram (danny.burks) that recaps all of the segments, and it feels appropriate to share that video here. My wife and I currently live in New York City, and I had to drive our SUV to and from Toronto due to some logistics outside of the challenge. 

It’s worth noting that my wife would have likely joined me on this journey, but she was in Japan on a pre-planned trip with her friends that included Singapore Airlines business class on the longest flight in the world (JFK-SIN) and Japan Airlines Premium Economy.

72: Hours in Air

Ending with 72 hours in the air is shocking for two reasons. Firstly, because the whole trip spanned 360 hours (15 days x 24 hours), which means 20% of my time away was spent in an airplane, which is absolutely bonkers. I’ve seen some other challengers complete their trips in as little as 9 days, meaning a remarkable 33% of their journey comprises sitting in an airplane. 

Secondly, 72 is also a significant number to end on because it was the number I chose for my first go-kart as a kid! I’ve viewed it as a bit of a lucky number since then, and it paid off in spades on this trip with only 2 flight delays. I could’ve added some extra style points for myself if I planned to finish with 72 hours in the air, but this was just a happy accident.

3,936: SAS Miles Earned

This doesn’t count the 1,000,000 bonus miles I will (hopefully) be awarded, but I wanted to include this number because it’s amazingly low for 15 mileage-earning flights.

Not to mention, I’m also nowhere near acquiring status with SAS, even after all of this SkyTeam flying. It takes 20,000 earned miles or ten eligible flights on SAS planes to earn the lowest tier, so I’m less than 20% of the way there.

Granted, I specifically chose the least expensive flights that still qualified for mileage accrual. But this is how most people travel: just get there as cheaply as possible on a reasonable itinerary and enjoy the destination.

This goes back to the old adage that traveling is the least efficient way of earning points (barring a crazy promotion like this one), and you will be more successful racking up tons of miles through financial institutions. If you’re new to that concept, read our miles & points beginners guide or listen to our Miles Ahead podcast episodes 1-3.

46,790: Kilometers Traveled

Now the numbers are starting to get big and almost unbelievable! Using one of our favorite tools, Great Circle Mapper, I painstakingly popped in all 26 segments and was proud to see my result of more than 46,000km in just 15 days, or about 3,000km traveled per day.

Even more interesting is my whole itinerary broken out by segment:

71,471: Hotel Points Burned

The reality of this trip is that it requires a heavy upfront investment, about $4,100 CAD for the flights alone, so I used hotel points to offset my lodging costs whenever a decent value presented itself. It’s worth mentioning that I redeemed 134,000 TD Rewards points acquired solely from product switching to cover $670 CAD of the flights, so my actual out-of-pocket expense was $3,430. Still, those rewards are like cash because you can use the refundable hotel trick to turn them into a statement credit. 

Being part of the points and miles ‘blog-o-sphere’ has some great perks, including hotel industry rates, which I used on more than one occasion during the journey. To that effect, I earned 13,029 Marriott Bonvoy points thanks to my Titanium Status, which awards 17.5 points per USD spent. I also tried to frequent Autograph Collection hotels, which provide daily breakfast and award 1,000 points as a welcome gift for Platinum Elites and up. 

I did opt to burn 23,000 Marriott Bonvoy points on two reservations, both in Asia, where point redemptions tend to have excellent value. I used 9,500 Marriott Bonvoy points to stay at the Sheraton Jakarta airport, which was more like a resort than an airport hotel and even included a free shuttle.

The other occasion I burned some Marriott points was in Kuala Lumpur, where I spent 14,500 points to stay at Hotel Stripes, an Autograph Collection property, which meant they gave me back 1,000 points—bringing my total to 13,500 for the night. 

This hotel had an excellent breakfast and an incredible rooftop pool with a partial view of the Petronas Towers and a fantastic view of KL Tower.

I also used 65,000 Hilton points, but I received back 5,000 thanks to their Q4 promotion, which awarded me 2,500 points per stay. My first Hilton stay was in Bucharest where I spent only 25,000 Hilton points to stay in the heart of Old Town, where most of the action is. Cash rates here are about $200 CAD, meaning these Hilton points had a value of about 1 cent CAD each.

The hotel had an excellent breakfast even though it was a ‘lowly’ Hilton Garden Inn, with warm rooms and, as I mentioned, a fantastic location. It’s worth noting as well that Romania has incredibly affordable public transportation. The bus to get into the city center from the airport was $0.94 CAD!

My second Hilton redemption was much less exciting but far more convenient. I tried to avoid airport hotels as much as I could, as I was trying to experience each city in the limited time I had. However, at the end of my trip, there was no option but to stay at the airport in Mexico City, as I arrived just before midnight and had a flight departing at 8:30 am the next day. 

While 40,000 points felt like a lot to spend for less than 6 hours of rest, it was worth it as this hotel is located inside Terminal 1 and has a 24-hour restaurant, and it was much needed after Air Canada’s abysmal food service, which included two bags of pretzels on a five-and-a-half-hour flight. 

The rooms were modern, and this hotel included a complimentary welcome drink and breakfast for Hilton Honors Gold members.

Lastly, I found creative use for some Wyndham points I built up over the years. Wyndham Rewards has some interesting pricing regarding Points+Cash redemptions, but that pricing can work in your favor. In my instance, it didn’t make sense to use only points, but I was able to redeem just 1,500 Wyndham points to save $20 CAD on my Shanghai airport hotel.

151,350: Airline Miles Burned

Yes, that is a lot of airline miles to use, making my net gain 848,650 miles (1,000,000 SAS miles – 151,350 airline miles). However, earning back the 150,000 miles I used is relatively easy, with a great sign-up bonus. 

To end up with a more comfortable and less expensive journey to go along with 1,000,000 miles in my SAS account I was happy to ‘sacrifice’ these miles. In fact, I was planning to use about 40,000 more miles, but a check-in snafu forced me to change my plans.

Below I’ll give a few details on each redemption.

15,300 Aeroplan Points for Toronto (YYZ) to Boston (BOS)

Considering the distance traveled during this itinerary, this was definitely the worst value redemption that I used miles for, but at least it was for my favorite domestic business class seat, 3A, on a CRJ-900. I love that seat because you get direct aisle access, your own window, and a space to put a backpack under the seat in front of you.

I wanted to book economy on this flight for a very reasonable 8,600 points, but when I clicked through to purchase, the process errored out, and when I went to try again, the new price of the flight was 16,700 in economy class or 15,300 in business class. 

I wasn’t super unhappy with that result, considering at least I would start a 36-hour travel day in comfort. My itinerary had me leaving Toronto at 8:00 am on Nov. 10th and arriving in Copenhagen at 7:30 pm on Nov. 11th.

4,750 Avios for London (LHR) to Copenhagen (CPH)

I wrote about this booking in great detail in my first post, but to quickly touch on it again, there’s some funny business happening at checkout when redeeming British Airways Avios for intra-Europe flights. I paid $41 out of pocket for this flight when most low-cost carriers wanted triple that and didn’t include carry-on baggage.

I wanted to stick to well-known carriers during this journey, as they have a better track record of keeping to their schedules and have more resources to overcome any mechanical issues. Those legacy carriers like British Airways and SAS were priced extremely high, but lucky for me BA still offered mileage redemptions.

20,000 Aeroplan Points for Bucharest (OTP) to Istanbul (IST) to Jeddah (JED)

I also touched on this flight in my preview article, and I was quite impressed with the redemption, considering it contained two business class segments for only 20,000 Aeroplan points plus $85 CAD in taxes and fees.

The first flight from Bucharest to Istanbul was delightful in a new regional business class cabin, and I had access to Turkish’s new flagship lounge, which included robes in the shower suites. I was excited for my second leg on a widebody with (what I thought) would surely have lie-flat seats.

Little did I know, not every Turkish A330 has been outfitted with lie-flat seats, which was a nasty surprise considering this was a nearly 5-hour flight departing at midnight Istanbul time, and I was banking on that for a decent night’s sleep.

I still managed to get some shuteye, but this was a disappointment. What slightly took the sting away is that I traveled nearly 4x the distance of YYZ-BOS for only 4,700 more Aeroplan points than that itinerary cost.

55,000 Avios for Medina (MED) to Doha (DOH) to Kuala Lumpur (KUL)

I booked this flight half awake in the Turkish lounge after my shower shook some sense into me. I had initially planned on taking a direct flight from Medina (MED) to Kuala Lumpur (KUL) in Malaysia Airlines economy class, but those plans were foiled by award availability. 

I had to settle for an economy ticket connecting the itinerary through Doha on Qatar Airways with some very expensive taxes and fees.

This was day six of the trip, and I was starting to feel the effects of sitting in an airplane seat for so long. I decided to search for award availability and found a wonderful itinerary that importantly started with a Qatar Airways First Class segment so I could access the Al Safwa First Class Lounge in Doha.

The First Class lounge in Doha has sleeping rooms with real beds that I was very happy to spend 6 hours in.

I wasn’t concerned about the long layover in Doha because I had originally planned on spending about 24 hours in Jeddah. The 11-hour connection time actually saved me an expensive hotel night in the Middle East and turned into the wonderful 13,500 Bonvoy point redemption in Kuala Lumpur, a city that was probably my favorite on the entire journey. 

I was glad I made this redemption as it turned out to be the only lie-flat seat of the whole trip. I was banking on United releasing some seats so I could cross the Pacific comfortably, but it wasn’t meant to be.

50,300 Aeroplan Points for Seoul (ICN) to Vancouver (YVR) to Mexico City (MEX)

I didn’t book this itinerary until about 36 hours before flying it, as I was waiting for United to open last-minute award availability as they usually do.

I had been searching the route every day, multiple times per day, and had an award alert setup with seats.aero. I specifically needed the flight leaving at 18:00 from Seoul (ICN) because the earliest Korean Air flight from Shanghai would arrive at 12:00. I couldn’t fly another airline to arrive earlier as Korean Air was one of the required carriers for the challenge. 

Unfortunately for me, United never opened up space on the 18:00 flight (unlike the example above) but I switched my plans to the 12:45 departure and decided to take a risk. Everything went well until I got to the final page of check-in where I repeatedly ran into an error. 

After calling United and Air Canada, the verdict was that I needed to check in at the airport, but that wouldn’t work as the cut-off for check-in is 60 minutes prior to departure, and I would be landing at ICN 45 minutes prior to departure.

Begrudgingly at 2 am Shanghai time, I hung up the phone, admitted defeat, and switched back to my original Air Canada booking which had a very reasonable $77 CAD of taxes and fees. One silver lining is that the phone agent for Aeroplan waived the change fee because of the check-in issue.

6,000 Aeroplan Points for Chicago (ORD) to Toronto (YYZ)

I wrote about this sweet spot in my guide to the Aeroplan Award Chart and it was nice to finish the journey with one of my favorite redemptions. The key to this sweet spot is to depart from the USA. You’ll avoid $78 in extra taxes and fees which is the annoying Canada Airport Improvement Fee among others.

Conclusion

The SAS Millionaire promotion was a challenging but extremely rewarding experience, both in terms of personal accomplishment and actual value. It’s amazing some of the statistics that came from the challenge, but I can’t say I’ll be first in line if another airline follows suit with a similar promotion!

I’m excited to track the value of these miles, barring everything that goes well with the end of the promotion in January and SAS doesn’t pull any funny business awarding the miles. In my conservative estimate, I think at least 500 challengers successfully completed 15 flights, meaning 500,000,000 SAS EuroBonus miles to be awarded. However, it could be over 1,000 successful challengers, meaning 1,000,000,000 miles need to be dished out.

Lastly, a big kudos to the SAS marketing team for making such a simple-sounding promotion, so incredibly difficult!