Hej TV4 viewers! I hope you enjoyed my brief little segment on how to travel on business class using miles. We are planning to launch our Swedish version of TopMiles in mid 2016, but in the meantime here are my brief thoughts on the programs within Sweden.
First, the bad news: Unlike American credit cards where sign up bonuses frequently reach tens of thousands of points, if not an occasionally 100,000 sign up bonus, Swedish credit cards offer a comparatively very minuscule sign up bonus.
The good news is, if you spend a decent amount of money on credit cards, you can still earn a relatively healthy amount of frequent flyer miles.
SAS Eurobonus
The main frequent flyer program for Swedes is the Eurobonus program by SAS, a star alliance program. Unfortunately, Eurobonus awards cost a substantial amount of miles, and they usually include a hefty “award fuel surcharge”. However, the award costs to North America are quite reasonable, with business class being 110,000 miles, which is comparable to other Star Alliance partners.
The full award chart can be found here.
To earn Eurobonus points you can go through two partners: AMEX and Coop MedMera Mercard.
If you spend over 12,500 SEK a month, I highly recommend either the AMEX EuroBonus Premium Card or AMEX Eurobonus Elite Card. Both offer a 50% miles redemption once a year for up to two passengers, provided you meet the minimum spend of 150,000 SEK per year. This is an AMAZING deal, and turns a poor value miles chart into one that is quite reasonable, if not a good value compared to other star alliance partners.
If you are a lower spender, the Coop MedMera Mercard is an option. Instead of directly earning EuroBonus points, you earn MedMera points which can be exchanged into EuroBonus points. You can find the details here, but essentially you earn around 1 Europoint for each 5 SEK being spent. In addition, it’s a MasterCard which means more merchant availability for you to put your spend on. Finally, the annual fee is a very reasonable 249 SEK per year.
Other Frequent Flyer Programs
If you are not looking to earn SAS Eurobonus miles, you are pretty much limited to American Express Platinum and Gold cards, which earn membership reward points. Membership Rewards Points in Sweden can be transferred to airlines such as British Airways, which has very generous mileage costs for short flights within Europe. Short flights such as Stockholm to Helsinki can cost as low as only 4000 British Avios. You can read a quick guide on the British Avios program here.
In addition, you can earn SPG points, although the transfer rate is pretty poor, at a rate of 25 reward points per SPG point. SPG points transfer to numerous valuable airline partners, including Alaska & American Airlines.
There are two main cards that earn Membership Rewards the AMEX Gold & Platinum Card. The Gold MR card has a 1500 SEK annual fee and earns 1 reward point for each 1 SEK spent.
The Amex Platinum comes with a slew of benefits and earns 1.5 reward points for each 1 SEK spent. However, the annual fee is an eye popping 7000 SEK. So unless you are using significant spend, I’d recommend getting the gold.
Current Hot Deal
If you are looking for a cheap economy flight within Europe, currently there is an extremely lucrative deal involving PointsHound, an American company that awards bonus air miles for each hotel stay
Currently PointsHound is running a special promotion awarding 10,000 FinnAir bonus points on your first booking on top of what you originally would receive when booking the hotel, which is almost enough to get a one way flight in Economy within Northern Europe on FinnAir, which costs 12,000 FinnAir points.
Now this offer is a bit hidden so you will first need to sign up for account here.
After successfully signing up for your PointsHound account, you then activate the hidden offer by clicking here.
Simply enter the hotels you want to stay at and hit search. The bonus points should immediately appear in the search result.
Book a hotel room that will earn you at least 12,000 points, earning you enough points for a free flight within Northern Europe!
In Conclusion
The points offers in Sweden are not as lucrative as those found in the United States, but with proper planning you can easily earn enough miles for a round trip ticket in Business Class using your Eurobonus points. Stay tuned for our Scandinavian launch in mid-2016!
