My former award booking partner Steve (some of you know him as “beaubo” on Flyertalk) literally wrote the book on 30 years of leveraging the biggest miles and points exploits.
One lesson he always reminds me is that if it’s a good deal, you should think about how it might scale. And right now Scandinavian is offering 1 million miles for flying on 15 different SkyTeam airlines. You can redeem most long haul destinations on their flights for 50,000 miles in business class, with no fuel surcharges. So 1 million miles is pretty good.
- The hard thing here isn’t making an itinerary work! That can be done for a few thousand dollars.
- It’s the time it takes to do all of this travel if you weren’t doing that anyway
- And of course there’s a risk that an itinerary falls apart.
Someone willing to take on a little bit of risk can arbitrage the first and second problems by finding other people willing to do the travel and funding it. That person is Steve.
His idea is to look for some folks willing to travel. He’ll fund the travel and he will follow all of the rules of the programs on mileage earning and redemption. So if you’d like a ‘free’ set of round the world flights, it’ll be worth connecting with Steve. You just won’t use the miles yourself. He buys the ticket like an employer might, you do the travel.
- You can start and end travel from your hometown
- Must travel between Nov 1- Dec 16
- He covers air, you are responsible for food, lodging, local activities, visas, etc.
- 9-10 days worth of flying, only 3 flights more than 8 hours
- You decide duration of total trip within the date range, as well as duration of stopover (if any) at each destination
- You must be from a country that allows transiting through China for less than 24 hours
- You will not be asked to carry, deliver or pick up any items
Flying 100% of the routing and within the time window are crucial. The deadline to commit to participating will be November 1 October 25. Just reach out to steve -at- bookyouraward.com or WhatsApp +12163468788.
Cool idea. Sounds like the tickets are for solo travel? I must say, solo leisure travelers tend to be losers. I’m not saying every solo leisure traveler is a loser — I’m just saying the likable sociable people tend to travel with friends.
I’m not a loser, and I’m not inclined to take up Steve’s offer. However, there are certainly a large number of losers who read this blog. I hope they have fun onboard flights where everyone else is having a good time traveling with their loved ones and they’re just flying “free” by themselves, checking into a hotel they have to pay for out of pocket by themselves, etc….
I might have been up for this were I not already spending most of November on cruises in Europe.
Starting from Atlanta where I live, I think the North American airlines could be done on a Mexico-Argentina trip followed by Air France to Europe. Then a few shorter intra-Europe flights to pick up SAS/Air Europa/Virgin//KLM/Tarom The combination of the others likely depends on which 2 to drop (Saudia, Kenya?). Return to US via Korean and Delta.
One other comment.
This is an extremely busy time of year for everybody with a serious occupation, student or professional. Students are busy wrapping up the semester. Professionals are busy wrapping up Q4 and planning for Q1 2025 and beyond. Just furthers my point above that losers will be traveling on Steve’s dime.
Put me down for 2 pax, me and wife!
Doesn’t this constitute selling miles or some other egregious violation of terms?
SFO/EWR, you are just the worst, most insufferable Karen. Everything you say is misinformed and laced with unearned arrogance. I feel sorry for the soy boy beta cuck who got tricked into a relationship with you. Just gross. Don’t worry, you’ll be traveling alone again soon enough.
Am I flying as Steve, who gets the million miles? What does Steve get out of this arrangement? What does agent get out of this, just flying around the world?
Soy boy? Lol, welcome to VFTW Middle School.
I was told by some that FT Mods wanted beaubo’s approach on FT to get people to do the SAS promo run for him to be shut down, and so they thought it made more sense he approach you as his former business partner.
Hopefully SAS won’t get annoyed and shut down accounts doing the promo run or shut down accounts because they think it’s pushing the limits. SAS has gotten more attention with this promo than they had probably budgeted for uptake.
SFO/EWR there are remote and seasonal workers who have time to travel at this time and may have more time than money or just be in for a different experience than the usual. Maybe some of them are single parents who have alternating weeks with a child and thus have the rest of the time off. Maybe some are retirees or empty nesters who can work from anywhere but like to be frugal.
Just because someone is different than you, I or someone else considered “more respectable” doesn’t make them “losers”. They may want to win an experience on the relative cheap rather than spending their own money. To each their own, with all due respect.
@GUWonder – what he proposes is within the rules, and SAS is getting a ton of attention from this which they wanted, they have a U.S. PR firm pitching it.
@Christian – nope!
Christian has a legitimate concern as there isn’t much to stop SAS from fishing for excuses to shut down accounts for program violations. And while it’s much cheaper to litigate in Scandinavia than in the US, it’s still unlikely to be worth it if SAS slams the door shut on access to the EuroBonus accounts.
That said, it’s not unheard of for employers/contractors to have requirements that points acquired from travel paid for by an employer/contractor should be used only for travel wanted by the employer/contractor and thus not amount to a potential tax liability for the employer/contractor and/or employee/contract worker.
Its not clear to me who gets the million miles? The person flying or Steve?
The flyer whose name is on the SAS account would get miles deposited in the account. But I think you mean who would use most or all of the promo miles earned while being paid to fly.
@GUWonder and any risk of SAS violating its own rules is on Steve here not the traveler
Excellent point, Señor Leff.
Our dear mileage running legend beaubo is picking up the risk of the 1 million points not working out.
“Just furthers my point above that losers will be traveling on Steve’s dime.”
A classic example of the type of statement that says more about the author than those he’s demonizing.
You can’t be 2 buddies doing the same trip???
Why does he need new people — is this harvest season in Thailand?
I can see this going viral and the Chinese miles gamers catching on. Imagine they recruit thousands to do this and billions of miles are going to need to be distributed? This would absolutely constitute them saying that the challenge has been done fraudulently and the abuse has required it to be shut down. There is always an out for them (like mistake fares), and I am sure if this goes wild SAS will run and slam the door behind them. For those who do it legitimately, just like the Hyatt UrCove scam, it will also take down a lot of innocent people and their accounts in the process.
Further, imagine the amount of miles now in the Skymiles system that will be up for redemption? An already awful alliance will become even more impossible to redeem.
This reminds me of those old 90″s commercials for Budget Rentals that had marketing people sitting around and looking for “cool” promotion ideas. My favorite was the pitch of providing aromatherapy candles for the rental cars. It than panned to a business traveler falling asleep with his candle burning and the car swerving off the road. “Bad Idea.”
Do NOT trust these airlines. Nor the people that abuse the system and create this circle of destruction of anything nice we once had.
I was considering this myself as I have a few weeks free in November. But I’m a bit spoiled and I don’t want to fly the long hauls in coach. Once I price it out in J and then add the risk of reroutes or missing a segment it looks less appealing.
Seems like a good deal for someone who wants to fly for free and doesn’t mind giving up the points!
For all those wondering, the flyer would earn the points into “their” account but, presumabely, that account would be controlled by beuabo who would either use the points himself or sell flights using them. The actual flyer might not even have the login information. In any event, I strongly suspect the airline would consider it a violation of their terms.
I have to assume that those SAS managers who planned and approved this promotion had to estimate how many current and potential program members would meet the promo requirements and get 1 million points each since it has budgeting and financial implications for the company even if planning to massively devalue the points with hiked up point prices, fuel surcharges or other ancillary fees on award tickets. So what was SAS’s internal guess on how many customers would achieve the 1 million points? SAS doesn’t have an endless of money, so there is a limit to what SAS can afford to pay out for 1 million point promo achievers.
Years ago, AA had a Oneworld challenge: the more OW carriers you flew, the more bonus miles you accrued. I think I flew 6 to get a 100,000 bonus, which was really worth something. Those were the days.
Thanks for the reminder Terry. It was 25 years ago where AA offered 100k miles if flying 5 Oneworld carriers in Q4 1999.
3 OneWorld carriers = 25K miles
4 Oneworld carriers = 50k miles
5 = 100k miles
And then I think it may have also come with a lottery entry for 1 million miles on top of that at the time and some other prizes.
The airlines then for that AA promo: American, British, Canadian,Cathay Pacific, Qantas, Finnair and Iberia.