SAS EuroBonus Million Points Challenge: What It Was and How It Worked
SAS offered one million EuroBonus points to anyone who flew 15 SkyTeam airlines in three months. Over 50,000 people registered. Around 900 finished. Here's what the challenge involved.
Note: This offer has expired. The SAS EuroBonus Million Points Challenge ended on December 31, 2024.
When SAS (Scandinavian Airlines) left Star Alliance and joined SkyTeam in September 2024, they could have done what most airlines do when switching alliances: send out a press release, run a double-miles promo for a few weeks, and call it a day. Instead, they launched one of the boldest marketing campaigns the loyalty world has ever seen. Fly with 15 different SkyTeam airlines before the end of the year, and SAS would give you one million EuroBonus points.
And it worked spectacularly. Over 50,000 people signed up. Travel forums, blogs, and social media lit up with route planning discussions and fare class debates. Points and miles communities that had never given SAS a second thought were suddenly deep in spreadsheets figuring out how to get from Bucharest to Jakarta via Jeddah. For a relatively small Scandinavian carrier trying to make a splash in a new alliance, it was a masterclass in generating buzz.
Of those 50,000 who registered, about 900 actually completed the challenge. One of them was Divyam Rastogi, who managed to pull it off in just nine days, covering 45,000 kilometres across four continents. My wife Shruti and I completed it too. SAS doesn't even fly to India, which made the whole thing even more absurd from a planning standpoint, but when someone dangles a million points in front of you, you find a way to make it work. We've already used some of those points for a Mumbai to Colombia trip in KLM business class, which was our first redemption and a pretty crazy one at that. I'll write more about why we took the challenge on and how it went in a separate post.
The challenge is done now. Air France-KLM has invested in SAS, and if they eventually take majority control, EuroBonus could merge into Flying Blue. Nothing is confirmed yet, but either way, a promotion this generous is almost certainly never coming back.
What Was the Challenge?
SAS structured the EuroBonus Millionaire Challenge in three tiers. Fly five different SkyTeam airlines and you'd earn 10,000 EuroBonus points. Hit ten airlines and that jumped to 100,000 points. But fly fifteen, and SAS would credit your account with a full one million points.
All flights had to take place between October 8 and December 31, 2024. You needed to register through the SAS app before your first qualifying flight, and your EuroBonus membership number had to be on every single booking.
What made the top tier impossible to ignore was the jump from ten to fifteen airlines. You'd go from 100,000 points to a million for just five more airlines. That's the kind of math that turns a "maybe I'll look into this" into booking an around-the-world itinerary at midnight.
The 17 Airlines You Could Fly
Every SkyTeam member airline was part of the challenge: SAS, Air France, KLM, Korean Air, Delta, Vietnam Airlines, Garuda Indonesia, Aeromexico, China Airlines, China Eastern, Saudia, Xiamen Airlines, TAROM, Kenya Airways, Air Europa, Virgin Atlantic, and Aerolineas Argentinas.
Since you needed fifteen out of seventeen, you could afford to skip two. Which two you dropped essentially determined your entire route. Most people cut Aerolineas Argentinas because it meant detouring to South America, and Xiamen Airlines because of confusing fare class rules where certain cheap tickets didn't actually count toward the challenge. But everyone's puzzle looked a little different depending on where they were starting from and how much time they had.
Why Only 900 People Finished
Flying fifteen airlines sounds straightforward until you look at where those airlines actually operate. Virgin Atlantic means you're going through London. TAROM means Bucharest. Garuda Indonesia means Jakarta. Korean Air means Seoul. Saudia means routing through Jeddah. There's simply no way to tick off fifteen of these without going around the world, and you had less than three months to do it.
The planning alone was a massive undertaking. People spent hours on FlightConnections.com mapping which airlines fly where, then stitched together itineraries on Google Flights and Google Sheets, trying to find one big loop that would minimise backtracking while keeping costs reasonable. And then came the real-world complications that no spreadsheet can fully prepare you for.
Visas were a big one, especially for Indian passport holders who needed transit permissions for a dozen countries on a compressed timeline. Tight connections between airports in the same city caught people off guard, particularly the infamous Paris CDG-to-Orly transfer where a delayed incoming flight and a long taxi ride could (and did) mean missing the next leg entirely. Certain airlines excluded their cheapest basic economy fares from counting, so you could book what looked like a valid flight and later discover it wouldn't register. And hanging over all of it was the fact that one missed flight could derail everything, because you specifically needed that airline and couldn't just rebook on a different carrier.
What made the whole thing manageable was the community that formed around it. WhatsApp groups, FlyerTalk threads, and online forums became hubs for real-time problem solving. When someone figured out that Kenya Airways operates a fifth-freedom route from Bangkok to Guangzhou (saving people from having to fly all the way to Africa), that tip spread through the community within hours. Same with the Expedia trick for checking fare class codes, or the discovery that trip.com was the best way to book Chinese airlines from outside China. People who were essentially strangers helped each other navigate one of the most logistically complex travel challenges anyone had attempted.
The Numbers
- 50,000+ people registered for the challenge
- ~900 completed the full 15-airline tier
- Divyam's trip: 9 days, 45,000 km, ~$3,000 in flights
- Points valid till: September 2029 for challenge completers
Want the Full Story?
We sat down with Divyam on the Magnify podcast to hear how he pulled off the entire challenge in nine days. He walks through the route planning, the missed Air Europa connection in Paris, running through Jakarta airport with a meet-and-greet service, getting questioned by Chinese immigration for entering the country twice in 24 hours, and the full cost breakdown of what it actually took.
Watch or listen here:
