Race To Fly: 5 Million Etihad Miles For Flying To 15 Destinations Fastest

It’s so fun when airline loyalty programs offer gamified promotions, since it’s great for creating engagement. In 2024, we saw SAS EuroBonus offer its million points promotion, to celebrate the transition from Star Alliance to SkyTeam. Now we’ve seen Etihad Guest introduce a fun promotion, though it’s a bit more challenging.

Etihad Guest’s incredible five million mile promotion

Etihad is growing quite a bit at the moment, and to celebrate that, the airline has introduced a promotion encouraging members to fly to the carrier’s new destinations. The goal with this promotion is to fly to the carrier’s 15 newest destinations in the shortest cumulative time.

The person who does it the fastest earns five million bonus miles, the person who does it second fastest earns three million bonus miles, and the person who does it third fastest earns one million bonus miles. The challenge is valid for travel between May 26, 2025, and May 25, 2026.

The winner will be notified by June 15, 2026. However, there will be a leaderboard, showing rankings for everyone who has completed the challenge. The required destinations include the following:

Algiers (Algeria), Atlanta (U.S.), Chiang Mai (Thailand), Hanoi (Vietnam), Hong Kong (Hong Kong), Krabi (Thailand), Medan (Indonesia), Peshawar (Pakistan), Phnom Penh (Cambodia), Taipei (Taiwan), Tunis (Tunisia), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Sochi (Russia), Prague (Czech Republic), Warsaw (Poland).

In the event that a route gets canceled, it will be exempt from the challenge, and the challenge will go ahead with the rest of the remaining routes. In the event there’s a tie, the person who is enrolled in the promotion longest will be the winner. Also note that GuestSeat award tickets are excluded from this offer.

This is a fun promotion, but challenging…

It seems that SAS has inspired some other airlines, and I’m happy to see that, as these kinds of offers are always fun. Obviously five million bonus miles is a massive prize, even if Etihad Guest miles aren’t my favorite mileage currency. That being said, there are a couple of aspects of this challenge that will be complicated.

I think the first challenge is the specific destinations involved, including the visa requirements. For example, for people from many parts of the world, traveling to Russia right now probably isn’t that practical, or something that people are comfortable with.

I think the second challenge is that you could invest a lot of time and money into this, only to not actually earn anything. With the SAS EuroBonus challenge, there were specific tasks that unlocked specific rewards, regardless of what others were doing (I suspect this made the promotion pretty costly for SAS, in the end). In this case, you could spend $20,000 booking flights, only to not actually win anything.

For that matter, you’re also reliant on flights operating on-time, so a delay outside of your control could destroy your chances of winning.

I certainly could be wrong, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t see anyone travel to all 15 destinations for close to a year, until shortly before the end of the competition. After all, it’s not advantageous to set the record early, when you give others nearly a year to then beat you. I look forward to revisiting this offer in nearly a year, to see where things stand.

Bottom line

Etihad Guest has just launched a fun promotion, offering nine million miles worth of prizes. With the Abu Dhabi-based airline expanding, the idea is that those who fly to all 15 of the carrier’s new destinations in the shortest cumulative time can win rewards. The first place prize is five million miles, the second place prize is three million miles, and the third place prize is one million miles.

This promotion has some unique challenges, including visa requirements, so I’m curious how many people try to “compete.”

What do you make of this Etihad Guest promotion?