Other North & South America Frequent Flyer Programs - Qualifying for "Comodoro" with LAN

Hi FT,

I will be moving to Ecuador in about a year, and I'm trying to work out how I will go about earning top status with LAN.

The easiest way to qualify seems to be by the third method on their website, "Accumulating 90.000 kilometers with a minimum of 6 medium or long haul segments in LAN's Business Class". According to this (http://www.lan.com/lanpass/categorias_socios/comodoro/tabla_vuelos_f_j-en-au.html) page, travel from Ecuador to Santiago, BA, the Caribbean, Australia and the US all count as medium/long hall, so travelling 6 biz class segments in a year should be easy.

However, I've noticed that not all south american flights are equipped with biz class (in particular, it seems the small airbuses don't have it). Is this correct, and would it present any significant difficulties in obtaining the status? Would I have to make sure I book the 767's (and hope there isn't an equipment change) or is there an equivalent class with a different name on the airbuses? I've tried to find this information on the net, but LAN's website is pretty baffling.

I was also wondering if anyone here actually has comodoro status, so you could give me an idea of whether the benefits it actually provides are worth gaining status for. The unlimited upgrades seem pretty nice, but the minimum fees to get them seem hefty. I'll also be doing a lot of overseas travel too, so the OW Emerald benefits are a pretty significant factor too.

Thanks!

Hi FT,

I will be moving to Ecuador in about a year, and I'm trying to work out how I will go about earning top status with LAN.

The easiest way to qualify seems to be by the third method on their website, "Accumulating 90.000 kilometers with a minimum of 6 medium or long haul segments in LAN's Business Class". According to this (http://www.lan.com/lanpass/categorias_socios/comodoro/tabla_vuelos_f_j-en-au.html) page, travel from Ecuador to Santiago, BA, the Caribbean, Australia and the US all count as medium/long hall, so travelling 6 biz class segments in a year should be easy.


i believe there is a very good fare GYE-MIA-GYE for 823$ + tax in LA business class. the segment GYE-MIA does count as medium haul flight and three roundtrips should gain you the 6 segments easily.

As you have mentioned, the easiest way is doing the 90,000 km and three rt paid flights in business. Al least from Lima, all medium and long range flights have the new J class seats. I personally fly a couple of times Lima-LAX when they have a deal which brings the RT price down to around $2,000 including the high Peruvian taxes. They announced one of these about a month ago for subscribers to the local newspaper and I grabbed two flights for next year. However when these deals aren´t available I just fly to Buenos Aires for a few days. Depending on where you will be living, you should just do your homework and find the best priced alternative for your business flights.
Yes, the minimum fare requirement for the automatic upgrade is a pain, but has the advantage of keeping a lot of lower level LanPass pax out of J, thus leaving room for me. If you will normally be flying a lot, then its probably a good idea to go for it. A good portion of my flights are taken just to keep Commodore status and when I do the math, I would probably be spending less just purchasing the J seats when I really need to fly, and not worrying about my LanPass status. However, as I mention here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/12570563-post9.html , the perks are very nice and at least for next year I already have my flights planned to keep my status until March 2012.

i am flying down to SA to do my comodoro qualification this week. i start in EZE and have a cheapo EZE-GRU-EZE ticket in biz-class (approx. 640€) from there i will continue to BOG via SCL and LIM on another cheap biz-class fare (approx. 950€). those two tickets alone contain 6 medium haul sectors in LA business class.

Good strategy. Thanks for the information.