Searching for sweetness with SAS EuroBonus: Round 1

About a week ago, I became a Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) EuroBonus Millionaire. Now that I finally have one million SAS miles, I’m starting to dig in to the program with excitement. Form being a rare SkyTeam program without surcharges to divergence of partner availability as compared to other alliance partners, I’m just scratching the surface and already finding the program intriguing (if not compelling). This post is meant to be “Round 1” in hunting for great uses of my newfound mileage fortune, but I’m confident that continued digging will lead to further nuggets over time.

No current partnerships with transferable currencies in the US

It’s worth a mention at the outset that this post won’t be highly relevant for most readers. That’s because SAS EuroBonus does not partner with any of the major transferable currencies in the US. It isn’t even possible to transfer Marriott Bonvoy points to SAS EuroBonus.

The only practical way for US-based travelers to earn SAS EuroBonus miles is to credit paid flights to SAS. That probably wouldn’t make sense over crediting to Air France / KLM Flying Blue or Delta for most folks.

That said, SAS EuroBonus does partner with Amex in the United Kingdom, so I guess it isn’t possible that they could one day partner with a points program in the US. Furthermore, in a recent Washington Post article, a SAS executive expressed how pleased the airline was with the results of the Euro Bonus Millionaire promotion. While I can’t imagine that we’ll see a return of the Millionaire promo, perhaps we’ll see other unique opportunities to pick up useful quantities of SAS miles.

SAS award charts

SAS offers two separate award charts, one for travel on its own flights and one for partner flights.

Award chart for travel on SAS-operated flights

The award chart for travel on SAS metal is as follows:

The standout value on that chart is flights between Europe and either Asia or North America, particularly in business class. At just 50,000 miles one way, business class is almost a no-brainer over premium economy (40,000 miles one way) and economy class (30,000 miles one way). That said, it isn’t easy to find those awards (more on how to do it in a minute) and SAS charges outrageous numbers of miles when the cheapest awards aren’t available.

The other standout value is the domestic flights within Norway, Sweden, and Denmark and the “Nordic+” region, which also includes Germany, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Flying from Germany to some of the more remote far northern reaches of Scandinavia can be an excellent value at 10K or 15K miles one way.

SAS Partner Award Chart

Note that SAS Partner award tickets can not be searched/booked from the SAS home page. Instead, you need to log in and go to this page to search for partner awards.

SAS offers a partner award chart with pricing that depends on region of origin and destination. Below is the chart for flights to/from North America, but it’s worth a look at pricing between other regions also (the full charts can be found on this page). Note that the chart displays round trip pricing. One-way awards are supposed to cost 60% of the price of a round trip award, but in practice I have found a lot of awards that price differently than one would expect based on the charts.

Some of those partner prices could be solidly competitive based on round trip pricing if you find availability on SkyTeam partners.

Even one-way pricing is roughly in line with many competitors. For instance, a one-way partner award to Europe rings in at 78,000 miles one way, which is more or less in line with what many other programs charge. One-way awards to Southeast Asia or the Pacific for 99K would put them under what you might pay via Air Canada Aeroplan while being more expensive than American Airlines AAdvantage.

South America in business class for an expected 54K one-way in business class or 90K round trip could also be a very good deal.

Out of the other various regional charts, perhaps the next most interesting is the chart from the Pacific region.

Most notable there are flights within the Pacific region. The SAS region definition for “Pacific” includes places that are pretty far from each other considering the chart above.

That said, my initial searches haven’t priced quite as expected, and the larger barrier is that SkyTeam has pretty limited service connecting places in that region. But if you find a unicorn Delta flight, you could maybe score a great deal from Hawaii.

Using award search tools to find SAS flights

PointsYeah Flight Deals

Sadly, it isn’t easy to find those 50K business class awards between the US and Europe — and when those aren’t available, pricing quickly climbs. For instance, it isn’t uncommon to see SAS charging anywhere from 200,000 miles to more than 1,000,000 miles for a one-way business class award to Europe on its own metal. Finding 50K awards can feel like finding a needle in a haystack.

The best way to find those needles is to use an award discovery tool like Pointsyeah Flight Deals or Award Tool’s “Explore” feature. You’ll want to filter to business class and pick “SAS EuroBonus” out of the “Airline programs” filter (both tools offer this).

Using a tool like that can make cheap business class awards findable. For instance, even though I knew that this date should have a business class award available from New York (JFK) to Paris (CDG) for 50K based on the award search tool I used, it still took my eyes a few scans to find the 50K business class flight among those costing more than a million miles one way.

Keep your eyes on Youtube for videos coming about how to use popular search tools to find stuff like this. A new video will publish tomorrow demonstrating how to use the free version of Pointsyeah to find stuff like this and we will surely publish more videos like it for the other tools in the coming weeks.

Seats.aero

I also used Seats.aero to find some of the awards shown below, though I used it unconventionally and with surprisingly mixed results.

Seats.aero does not have an “Explore” tool for SAS EuroBonus. However, I guessed that SkyTeam flights available to book via Virgin Atlantic would likely also be available to SAS EuroBonus and I thus used the Seats.aero “Explore” tool for Virgin Atlantic to look at Delta and Air France / KLM flights that were available to Virgin expecting to find those same flights available to SAS.

As it turned out, availability did not match up. Flights that were available to Virgin Atlantic were sometimes available to SAS, but not always. Further, SAS appears to have access to some flights that I didn’t see via Virgin Atlantic. In the end, I often found some availability around similar date ranges, but it turned out that the Virgin Atlantic Explore tool was less useful than I’d hoped for finding these awards. Still, if you have access to Seats.Aero, it might be a starting point as some flights were available to both airlines.

A few early finds

Air France without surcharges

While I’m not wildly excited about paying 78,000 miles one-way for business class to Europe, it’s about on par with what many airlines charge for business class awards to Europe. However, a standout here is that SAS does not pass on carrier-imposed surcharges.

For instance, this award from Detroit to Paris includes Delta to Washington-Dulles and Air France from Washington to Paris and it rings in at 78,000 miles and 76.15 EUR in taxes & fees.

I went all the way to the final checkout page and can confirm that there were non additional taxes & fees. I verified the same was true on Air France connecting Europe with other regions as well. For instance, while the taxes aren’t shown here, I can verify that this itinerary from Barcelona to Dubai via Paris did not include the usual Air France surcharges.

Delta to Europe without surcharges

While Virgin Atlantic now adds ~$1,000 in surcharges one way on Delta business class awards to Europe, SAS doesn’t. See the flight below from New York (JFK) to Rome (FCO) on Delta for 78K miles and 55.14 EUR.

Keep in mind that while 78K is only a lukewarm one-way price, you would only pay 130,000 miles round trip if you’re able to find availability in both directions.

Southeast Asia to Central Asia

We frequently find that airline award charts have more favorable pricing when connecting regions that don’t touch the airline’s “home” region.

One example from the SAS chart might be Southeast Asia to Central Asia, which would be 90,000 miles round trip in business class or 54K miles one way (60% of the round trip price).

An example of that pricing can be seen below from Bangkok to Jeddah to Delhi, India on Saudia.

That isn’t a particularly desirable way to get from Bangkok to India when you consider the fact that a nonstop flight is only about 4.5 hours (versus the 18 hours and 40 minutes of travel time above!). However, buying that ticket from Bangkok to the Middle East to Central Asia costs less than traveling from Bangkok to the Middle East, which would cost 78K miles one way.

Let me be clear: I am not recommending that you try booking a hidden city ticket if you really want to visit Saudia Arabia. This example isn’t really about this specific example, but rather to demonstrate that SAS allows transiting a third region and bases award pricing on the region of origin and destination. I wouldn’t recommend booking this trip and skipping the final leg, but the way that prices does demonstrate that there are probably other such opportunities to be found.

Hawaii is interesting

Through the lens of the above, I’ve been very curious about what I can find between Hawaii and the rest of the Pacific region. Unfortunately, I’ve mostly come up empty. There isn’t much SkyTeam availability traveling between Hawaii and the rest of the Pacific in any cabin. I haven’t yet found anything in a premium cabin.

However, my findings thus far certainly have me curious. Based on the award chart, I would expect a round trip award ticket from Hawaii to the rest of the Pacific to cost 25K miles round trip in economy class or 50K miles round trip in business class. A one-way award should cost 60% of those numbers.

I haven’t found anything that prices according to those numbers. However, this itinerary from Honolulu to Seattle to Taipei to Palau for 30,000 miles one-way in economy class gives me hope that there is an exciting needle to be found in this haystack.

That’s because the above itinerary, while not particularly desirable entirely in economy class, costs both more than expected (I would have thought it would be 60% of the round trip economy class price of 25K) and less than the sum of its parts.

Flying Honolulu to Seattle would cost 54K miles one way.

And flying Seattle to Taipei would cost 54K miles one way.

Flying from Honolulu to Taipei should cost 70K round trip / 43K miles each way. However, combining all of the above with that final leg to Palau (airport code ROR) drops the price to 30K miles one way in economy class.

That 30K one-way pricing would seem to be based on a 50K round trip price (it would be 60% of 50K miles), but I don’t see any region combination from Hawaii that should cost 50K round trip in economy class.

I found some other awards that similarly didn’t seem to price as expected throughout my first rounds of searches, both for better and for worse. I don’t yet know if there is a pattern or a method to the madness, but I’ll keep hunting.

I do know that hitting the next date to advance dates one after another in quick succession will eventually exceed a limit and slow you down, so you’ll probably want to lean heavily on award search tools if looking for unicorns.

Bottom line

I anticipate diving deeper into the possibilities with SAS. I anticipate that there are a number of hidden gems here. Furthermore, award rules state that it is not possible to book mixed-cabin awards online, but it sounds like it is possible to do so over the phone. Further, based on the rules it sounds like it is possible to call and add a segment to an already-booked award provided that it doesn’t extend the trip to a different destination region. I could see there being some interesting opportunities there if you’re able to find segments that can’t seem to be connected via a single award search. While SAS is obviously a niche program and the award quirks likely apply to a very small number of Americans, I’ll nonetheless be excited to see what I can find in my quest to get far outsized value from the miles earned from last year’s Million Mile Madness challenge.

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