What is SAS EuroBonus? A plain guide to bonus points

If you fly out of Scandinavia even a few times a year, you have probably been asked at some point whether you are a EuroBonus member. Most people click yes, collect a few thousand points, and then forget the whole thing. That is a shame, because EuroBonus is one of the more generous loyalty programs in Europe once you understand how it actually works.

This guide is the short version I wish someone had given me when I started.

What EuroBonus is

EuroBonus is the loyalty program run by SAS (Scandinavian Airlines). You join for free, you collect points when you fly or spend with partners, and later you spend those points on flights, upgrades, hotel nights, and a few other things.

One thing worth knowing up front: in September 2024 SAS left Star Alliance and joined SkyTeam. So the partner airlines you can now book with your points are names like Air France, KLM, Delta, Virgin Atlantic and Korean Air, not Lufthansa or United anymore. If you read an older guide that talks about Star Alliance redemptions, it is out of date.

The two kinds of points

Since late 2025 EuroBonus splits your earning into two separate counters, and mixing them up is the most common beginner mistake.

• Bonus points are the spendable currency. This is the number you care about when you want to book a trip. Bonus points pay for award flights, upgrades and so on.
• Level points decide your status (Silver, Gold, Diamond). You cannot spend them. They reset when your qualification year ends.

So you can have a big Bonus point balance and still be a basic Member, or have high status and few points to spend. They are tracked separately on purpose.

How you earn

You earn points in two broad ways:

• By flying, on SAS and its SkyTeam partners. How much you get depends on the fare you bought and your status.
• Without flying, which is where most people actually rack up points. A co-branded credit card, hotel stays with Scandic or Strawberry, the EuroBonus online shopping portal, car rental and dining partners all add points without you setting foot on a plane.

For a lot of casual travelers, the credit card is the single biggest source of points. It quietly does the heavy lifting in the background.

How you spend

The headline use is award flights. Instead of paying cash, you pay a number of Bonus points plus a smaller fee and taxes. A short domestic hop can cost only a few thousand points, while a long-haul Business Class seat runs into the tens of thousands.

The catch, and the reason tools exist for this, is availability. SAS only releases a limited number of award seats on each flight. A route can have ten seats for sale in cash and zero on points the same day. Finding the dates where award seats actually exist is the real skill, and it is the thing most people give up on too early.

Where to start

If you do nothing else: join, get points flowing in through a card or partner, and learn to search for award availability rather than guessing. Once you can see which dates have open seats, the rest falls into place.

When you are ready to look for real availability, the Bonussøk search checks SAS award seats in real time across Economy, Premium Economy and Business, so you can see what is actually bookable instead of clicking through SAS date by date. It is free to try.