How to use EuroBonus points for flights, step by step

Earning points is easy. Spending them well is where people get stuck, usually because they search the way they would for a cash ticket and come up empty. Award flights work differently. Here is the process that actually gets you booked.

Step 1: know your balance and what it buys

Open your account and look at your Bonus point balance, the spendable number. As a rough sense of scale, a short domestic flight can cost a few thousand points one way, a flight within Europe more, and a long-haul Business Class seat can run into the tens of thousands. These prices vary by route and demand, so use them as ballpark, not gospel.

Step 2: understand award pricing

When you book with points you pay two things: a number of Bonus points, plus a smaller cash amount covering taxes and a booking fee. The fee is usually modest compared to a cash ticket, which is the whole point of the exercise. Partner award fees were restructured in 2026 and are now refundable if you cancel, which takes some of the risk out of booking early.

Step 3: be flexible with dates

This is the single biggest factor. SAS releases only a limited number of award seats per flight, and they are not spread evenly. The same route might have zero award seats on a Friday and plenty on a Tuesday two weeks later. If your dates are fixed to the day, you are fighting the system. If you can shift by a few days, your odds jump.

Step 4: find the seats

You cannot book an award seat that has not been released, so the job is finding the dates where one exists. Clicking through SAS one date at a time works but it is slow and easy to give up on. A search tool that scans many dates at once saves hours.

The Bonussøk search checks SAS award availability in real time and shows Economy, Premium Economy and Business side by side, so you can spot a cheap day or an open Business seat without manually checking each date. If you are flexible across a whole month or season, the flexible search is built for exactly that.

Step 5: book and pay

Once you find an open seat, you complete the booking through SAS, pay the points plus the fee, and you are done. If you booked a partner flight, double check the cancellation terms, though the refundable fee change makes early booking far less nervy than it used to be.

A note on upgrades and other uses

Award flights are the headline, but points also pay for cabin upgrades on a paid ticket, hotel nights, and items in the EuroBonus shop. Upgrades can be good value when a Business seat in points costs less than the cash difference. The shop almost never is. As a rule, points are worth most when spent on flights.

The honest bottom line

Spending points well comes down to flexibility and good information. Be willing to move your dates, know roughly what things cost, and use a tool that shows real availability instead of guessing. Start your search here.