Spending my SAS Euro Bonus points
 

My husband is Diamond, I am gold. Together we have more than a million Euro Bonus points to spend. This has been difficult. Every single time we are going away, we check the possibility of paying for our holiday trips with points, but we are just never lucky. I have just spent two hours trying to find out if there is ANYWHERE at all in the US or SA Asia we could go for two weeks around Easter using miles to buy three business class tickets, but nothing available as far as I can see. What am I doing wrong? Am I too late? When should I search for Euro Bonus point tickets? I wish they had a system where I could input dates, number of tickets required and class and I could get a quick overview of where it was possible to fly to. Or that they had the system I used to know from Lufthansa HON where HONs could buy ANY free ticket with miles (not just a limited nummer of specific "miles tickets" available). Any tips??

Three business class seats is a difficult one with the exception of Beijing and Shanghai.

I would suggest that you check https://travelhacks.azurewebsites.net/.

I've just ordered three business class seats myself - a long weekend for myself, my husband and his brother. We experienced that three business class seats to US regularly opened up about four months in advance. At the moment, there is quite a lot 7 to 14 days availability to Washington DC and Chicago the coming months - up till the start of march.

If you are looking across Star Alliance as opposed to only SAS, I would suggest you try search via the UA website - no sign-up needed, and at least it gives a good indication as to what is available. Note however, that you cannot be 100% certain that what is available to UA is available to SK. But for what it is worth, this is the way I have found our recent many business class award tickets.

I have found the recently added EuroBonus award search for Star Alliance flights through the SAS website very unreliable, and when I finally made it show what I was looking for (found via UA), the reservation came up with an error :o But all was solved by a call to the EBG/D hotline.

That said, three tickets during Easter holidays might be tough at this time as availability during traditional holidays tend to be snapped up as soon as they are made available.

Hope this helps - good luck!

If you want to go during Easter or other major travel periodd from Scandinavia, you really need to look exactly when the award seats are released So almost a year in advance. Adding to that 3 J seats, really tricky.

You would probably want to split the carriers, so that not all three flies on the same flights, or off set a day or two for one or two of the passengers

If you are looking at SK flights, look at cash plus points options (best availability rather than best point price) 1M eb points should get the cash part fairly low on 3 return J SK flights And you then accrue new points.

I am pretty new to this, so thanks for the link, never used that site before. Nothing available for Easter, though... We travel husband, wife and son and have to go during school holidays, which must be a reason for the problem.

Thanks. Is there a way to know exactly when the award seats are released or do I need to check regularly around one year in advance?

Where do I find the cash plus points option?? Do you mean that I buy a ticket and then use points to upgrade?

Sorry for my stupid questions, I am really new to this

Thanks for the tip regarding using the UA website. So much better!! (but still nothing free for the period we can be away (school holidays)).

Sorry to hear - but that is unfortunately quite common. Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but I seem to remember that Star Alliance awards are usually made available 330 days in advance.
On a general note, it is really worth finding availability online to know exactly which flights you want before calling SK to book - I have had several cases of them saying "no sorry nothing available", but when I tell them to check specific flight numbers and dates, suddenly it is possible :)

You can use your points to buy cash+points ticket and with a million, pretty much offset the majority of the ticket fees. The benefit is that you'll not be relying on award availability. Have you looked at that option?

If you use the points option on sas.dk/fi/no/se then you get the following choice when you click search

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...91c2ec34c4.png

Oh, thank you so much. I was not aware that this was possible at all and how it works. Really helpful. Found it for the SAS tickets. Can I do this for Star Alliance tickets as well?

No, it only works on SK's network. Though nothing stops you from buying separate tickets on other airlines to extend the journey from there.