Booking a Family of Three in Business Class to New York: An EuroBonus Case Study

That number surprises people. The standard Business Class price for two adults and a child round trip to North America, before any optimization, would have been 250,000 points pre-devaluation — and 290,000 today. We paid 60% of the pre-devaluation list price, and we got a better itinerary than a tidy round trip to a single airport would have allowed.

This is how family bookings on EuroBonus actually work when you stop thinking of Business Class as a couples-or-solo product and start using all the levers available. There are three: Fly Premium, the SAS-only child discount, and routing flexibility within a destination metro area. Used together, they turn long-haul Business into a realistic family travel category.

The booking, line by line

Booked for travel July 5–22, 2025.

Outbound: ARN → EWR (Newark), nonstop, July 5

Return: JFK → CPH → ARN, July 22

Standard Business price (pre-December 2025 devaluation): 50,000 points one-way to North America. Round trip per adult: 100,000. For two adults plus one child at 50% discount: 100,000 + 100,000 + 50,000 = 250,000 points.

Fly Premium price (200k+ tier): Economy points price = 30,000 one-way to North America. Round trip per adult: 60,000. Child at 50% off the Fly Premium price: 30,000. Total: 60,000 + 60,000 + 30,000 = 150,000 points.

The cash component covered standard taxes and surcharges, paid by card at booking.

For perspective on the redemption value: an equivalent SAS Business round trip for a family of three booked in cash would be a major travel expense even at the lower end of Business pricing. The points-based booking captured most of that value at a cost of roughly half what two full-price Business round trips would have cost in points alone.

That's the math. Here's why each piece of it works.

Lever one: Fly Premium at the top tier

I covered this in detail in the Fly Premium guide, but the short version: SAS Mastercard Premium holders earning 200,000+ Bonus Points in the trailing 12 months can book any SAS-operated flight in Business Class at the Economy points price.

For long-haul to North America, that's 30,000 points one-way instead of 60,000 (post-devaluation) or 50,000 (pre-devaluation). Per person, per direction. Unlimited bookings throughout the year.

The benefit applies to everyone on the same booking, not just the cardholder. This is the part most people miss. Book your spouse, your kids, your parents — they all get the discount as long as they're traveling on your reservation. There's no "primary cardholder only" restriction.

Why this is decisive for families: the Amex 2-for-1 voucher, the other major Business Class discount tool, has a hard ceiling of two passengers per booking. It cannot fit a family of three on one reservation. Fly Premium has no passenger limit. Two, three, four travelers — same discount applies to all of them.

Lever two: the child discount (SAS-only)

EuroBonus discounts award tickets for children aged 2–11 by 50% on SAS-operated flights. The discount applies to both the points price and most of the taxes and surcharges. Infants under 2 fly on a lap pass for nominal taxes only.

Here's the strategic detail most people miss: the child discount does not apply to partner-airline award bookings. SAS's terms are explicit: "There are no discounts for children (2 to 11 years old) applicable to partner award flights." Book your kids on KLM, Air France, Delta, Korean Air, or Virgin Atlantic, and they pay full adult points price.

This makes SAS-operated routing significantly more valuable for families than any partner alternative. A family of three to North America on SAS metal: 150,000 points with Fly Premium and child discount. The same family on a KLM partner booking via Amsterdam: 240,000 points minimum, no Fly Premium discount, no child discount, and a partner administration fee of 450 SEK per person added on top.

Based on my actual booking, the child discount stacks with Fly Premium — my son's price was 30,000 points round trip, which is 50% of the Fly Premium economy price (60,000), not 50% of the list Business price. The terms don't explicitly document this, but the booking priced exactly at 150,000 points, which only works if both discounts apply together.

A note on age: the discount applies based on age at the time of travel, not booking. If your child turns 12 between booking and the flight, you'll be charged the difference. Plan accordingly for borderline ages.

Lever three: routing flexibility within a metro area

We didn't fly into and out of the same airport. We flew into Newark, drove north over more than two weeks all the way to Montreal, and flew home from JFK. That meant:

• No backtracking to a single airport
• No rental car drop-off fees in a different state
• No internal flight to get back to the original arrival city

SAS doesn't charge extra for this kind of multi-airport routing within the same destination metro area. Newark and JFK are both New York airports, and from a points-pricing perspective the booking is treated as standard round-trip ARN to North America. The flexibility costs nothing.

True open-jaw bookings — where the origin or destination spans different award zones — are also allowed, but with restrictions. SAS permits open-jaws on either the origin or the destination, but not both. Stockholm out and Copenhagen home is fine (both Domestic Europe). Newark in and Atlanta home would be fine (both North America). Both at the same time isn't permitted: you can't fly Stockholm to Newark and home from Atlanta to Copenhagen on the same award booking.

For families with road trips or multi-city itineraries, this single rule unlocks significantly better trip planning. A two-week loop through the Northeast is feasible with one award ticket. A trans-American road trip San Francisco to New York would also work as a true open-jaw, since both endpoints sit in the North America zone.

The booking has to be made by phone with EuroBonus customer service — the online tool doesn't handle multi-airport routings reliably. SAS charges a service fee for phone bookings as standard, but Diamond-tier members can book by phone without the fee. For everyone else, it's worth asking the agent whether the routing could even be completed online; if it couldn't, the fee is sometimes waived.

Planning a complex family routing? Get in touch — multi-airport and open-jaw EuroBonus bookings are exactly the kind of thing that's hard to find online but straightforward once you know the rules.

What didn't work, and why

Two strategies I considered and rejected:

Using an Amex 2-for-1 voucher instead of Fly Premium. I have the SAS Amex Elite card and was sitting on a voucher. The math: voucher applied to my wife and me would have given us 100,000 points combined for the round trip (the voucher takes 50% off the points price, applied to two travelers in the same booking). Then my son at 50,000 (his standalone child-discounted Business price). Total: 150,000 points — the same as Fly Premium. But the voucher is a one-shot benefit (two per year max), and burning it on a route SAS already flies with Fly Premium coverage would have been wasteful. I saved the voucher for a partner-airline booking later in the year. Use the limited tool when it's the only option that works; use the unlimited tool everywhere else.

Booking partner metal (Air France, KLM) to North America. A partner booking would have added 450 SEK per traveler in administration fees on top of the points cost. More importantly, Fly Premium doesn't apply to partners, and the child discount doesn't apply either — we'd have paid the full Business points price for all three of us. The math gets worse fast: somewhere around 240,000 points minimum versus 150,000 on SAS metal.

What this booking taught me

Three takeaways for any EuroBonus member planning a family trip in Business Class.

One: the cost ceiling is much lower than people assume. A family of three or four in Business to North America is realistic in the 150,000–200,000 point range with the right tools and routing. That's roughly the same points cost as one solo round-trip Business booking at full pre-devaluation list price. The math runs against people's intuition because they assume each additional passenger doubles or triples the cost. With Fly Premium and the SAS child discount, additional family members cost a fraction of the first one.

Two: SAS metal beats partner metal for families, almost always. The combination of Fly Premium discount and the SAS-only child discount makes domestic-route SAS bookings dramatically cheaper than equivalent partner alternatives — even when the partner option looks more direct or more comfortable on paper. For long-haul, this means flying SAS to North America (where SAS operates extensive routes) and saving the partner-booking strategy for destinations SAS doesn't reach.

Three: routing flexibility is an underused EuroBonus advantage. Multi-airport bookings within a metro area cost nothing extra. True open-jaws across different cities in the same award zone cost nothing extra. The booking flexibility is built into the program; it just isn't surfaced anywhere obvious. For trips with road trip or multi-city components, plan the trip you actually want, then book the routing that supports it.

Bottom line

Family Business Class on EuroBonus isn't a luxury edge case. It's a category most active members can reach with the right card setup and a willingness to plan ahead. The combination of Fly Premium top tier, the SAS-only child discount, and routing flexibility turns what looks like a 290,000-point booking today into a 150,000-point one — and the trip you take with the points you save is genuinely better, not just cheaper.

If you're sitting on a EuroBonus balance and thinking about a summer trip with kids, the planning starts now. The May–August school holiday window books up first; multi-airport routing requires phone bookings that take longer to set up; and the child discount has age cutoffs that matter for borderline cases.

Get in touch and I'll walk through your specific dates, ages, and points balance. Pricing is quoted per request, based on the complexity of the routing.