Route Planning For My SAS Million Mile Challenge

I’m moving forward with the SAS EuroBonus Million Mile Challenge and taking my son along. Here’s how I planned it, booked it, and the prices I paid for each ticket.

Planning And Booking My SAS EuroBonus Million Mile Challenge

When I originally decided I was taking part in this challenge and taking my 8-year-old son Augustine, I had hoped to spend a day in each city…what fun to visit cities like London, Madrid, Bucharest, Copenhagen, Paris, Amsterdam, Jeddah, Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City, Tapei, and Seoul (to name a few…).

But I have a full-time profession beyond this blog and my son is in school. So it quickly became clear that I was going to have to accelerate the trip or not take it all.

While I’m a bit concerned about the inflationary effects of hundreds of million mile deposits in SAS EuroBonus (or maybe thousands – it seems many are participating in this challenge), I’m still hopeful it will fund a lot of travel between the USA and Europe on SAS metal (partner redemptions with EuroBonus are far less attractive).

How I Planned And Booked The Trip

While I did glance at FlyerTalk and other blogs for some route inspiration, I sat down one recent evening at about 8:00 pm to plan out the trip my…and did not stop until 3:30 am when everything was booked.

That’s the way I used to write term papers (and not the night before they were due…)—better to sit down in one setting and get it done than do little bits and pieces. Unlike a term paper or other school assignment, airline ticket prices fluctuate greatly and so I did not want to return the following evening and find that pricing and availability had changed.

Some flew south, some flew west, but I decided to fly east first from Los Angeles…to New York to catch a cheap Virgin Atlantic fare. Delta had rather pricey tickets from LAX-JFK and they booked into basic economy (E), which are not eligible to earn miles with SAS EuroBonus.

Thus, I decided to take JetBlue to New York (excellent legroom, free wi-fi) and start the challenge from JFK.

Virgin Atlantic offers one-way fares from New York as cheap as $198 to compete with Norse Atlantic. Our tickets were $242 each and while I was tempted to book the daytime service to London, I booked an evening flight in order to fly the Airbus A330-900neo, the only Virgin Atlantic fleet I have not flown.

From there, it became a race. I have only a week to be home for Thanksgiving so I had to kick my search into overdrive.

I used Google Flights (entering continents for destinations to find the cheapest fares) to string together a series of tickets on SAS, Air Europa, Tarom, and Air France. 

We’ll fly on a cheap SAS ticket from London to Malaga via Copenhagen, then immediately connect on Air Europe to Madrid. From Madrid, we will fly to Bucharest on Tarom.

It wasn’t perfect (and a couple of extra nights would have made it so much more efficient and relaxing), but the only scheduling limitation that made me book beyond SkyTeam was arriving in Bucharest at around 5:15 pm and needing to be in Paris the following morning for a 7:25 am flight.

There are no evening flights from Bucharest to Paris, even on budget carriers. There’s a KLM connection that would have been perfect had we arrived just an hour earlier into Bucharest, but I was forced to book a one-way ticket on LOT Polish from Bucharest to Paris via Warsaw…not a big deal, but it will mark the only flight that does not directly help us complete the challenge.

From Paris we will fly to Tunis on Air France, where I booked a cheap business class fare on Saudia to Kuala Lumpur via Jeddah. We’ll have an 8.5-hour layover in Jeddah, but I will use that time to work, just like I will during all of our extended layovers.

From Jeddah, we will catch a KLM “Fifth Freedom” flight to Jakarta, my tightest connection of the trip (only 1 hour, 20 minutes). Let’s hope that Saudia flight is on time!

Then we’ll fly Xiamen to Taipei via Xiamen. The economy class ticket was only $178, but it booked in a mileage non-earning class. I kept bumping up the fare class and by the time I reached a fare that earned SAS EuroBonus miles, the ticket was $382. So instead I booked a business class ticket for $525. Sadly, I won’t get to experience Xiamen’s 787 Dreamliner, but even a comfier seat on the 737-800 that will take us overnight from Jakarta to Xiamen was worth the modest splurge.

From Tapei, we will fly to Ho Chi Minh City on China Airlines and finally rest for a night. I had wanted to spend a couple of nights here, but I also wanted to be home for Thanksgiving and not be away from my wife and daughter longer than necessary.

Thus, after just a night in SGN, we’ll fly to Singapore on Vietnam Airlines, connect back to Jakarta on Garuda Indonesia, and then fly to Shanghai on China Eastern. From Shanghai, we will fly home to LAX on Korean Airlines via Seoul. 

My Final Routing

Here’s a look at my final routing and the price I paid for each tickets. 

While many have done this for better than $3500, I think the price is not bad considering how efficient we are traveling and that it will partially be in business class. I do plan to upgrade the KLM flight to business class in KUL if I can get the usual 100 EUR upgrade fee (beforehand, the price is $250 each, which is not worthwhile for the two-hour flight).

Feel free to let me know how I could have done better!  

I know many used AA miles to travel within the Middle East or from the Middle East to East Asia, but I wanted to stick to SkyTeam where I could. That said, those particular AA awards in business class are true sweet spots (long overdue for a devaluation) and if I had more time I would have taken Augustine to several more destinations in the region.

If you’re counting, this is 13 airlines…that leaves two to complete the challenge. We will do a quick trip to Mexico outbound on AeroMexico, returning on Delta next month.

DAY
AIRLINE
ROUTE
CABIN
COST (USD)

0
JetBlue
LAX-JFK
Y
189

1
Virgin Atlantic
JFK-LHR
Y
242

2
SAS
LHR-CPH-AGP
Y
129

2
Air Europa
AGP-MAD
Y
97

3
Tarom
MAD-OTP
Y
125

3
LOT Polish
OTP-WAW-CDG
Y
188

4
Air France
CDG-TUN
Y
199

4
Saudia
TUN-JED-KUL
J
700

5
KLM
KUL-CGK
Y
66

5
Xiamen
CGK-XMN-TPE
J
525

6
China Airlines
TPE-SGN
Y
150

7
Vietnam Airlines
SGN-SIN
Y
212

7
Garuda Indoneisa
SIN-CGK
Y
152

7
China Eastern
CGK-PVG
Y
178

8
Korean Air
PVG-ICN-LAX
Y
400

TOTAL
3552

Where I Booked My Tickets

I booked every single ticket except the Korean Airlines ticket on Orbitz.

Why Orbitz? The biggest challenge beyond scheduling these flights was ensuring that every ticket was booked into a fare class that earned miles. I appreciate that Orbitz clearly shows the fares class and has a 24-hour courtesy cancellation for all tickets, even with carriers that do not otherwise provide one.

While phone support is not ideal should I run into issues during the trip and have to make changes, I find the Orbitz website very easy and appreciate the fare class transparency and easy cancellations.

I booked the last segment directly with Korean because it was half the price of any online travel agency (perhaps because it originated in Mainland China?).

I applied for a Vietnam e-visa five days ago and still have not received it…I hope it comes through (Augustine has a German passport so he does not require one).

CONCLUSION

I’m booked and ready to go on the SAS Million Mile SkyTeam challenge! The route planning was fun…it reminded me of how much I still love to fly for the sake of flying.

My intention was to visit Egypt and hopefully score a cheap fare out of Cairo, but I found a much better fare out of Tunis instead. Overall, I think the routing and price came together nicely considering I only booked a week in advance.

Yes, I’m a little apprehensive it may be a bit much, especially for Augustine, but the only way we are going to know is if we try.

Stay tuned: I’ll be live blogging the trip this week.