US Airways Dividend Miles (Pre-FlightFund Merger) - Pittsburgh to Santiago, Chile

I'm looking for a way to use USAirways frequent flyer miles to get to Santiago, Chile. Apparently neither USAirways nor United flies into Chile. Is anyone aware of any other USAirways partnerships that might work? Thanks in advance.

Welcome to FlyerTalk!

You may have to wait for US to officially join the Star Alliance to get to Chile.

You might offer to swap someone the requisite # of miles in the form of a US/UA/LH award if they will get you to Chile on another airline. The Coupon Connection forum is the avenue to pursue such a trade...

You could do an award on US/UA to/from PIT - Buenos Aires or Sao Paulo and buy a r/t on another carrier from there. Not ideal but...

You might also check to see if any of US Airways' Latinpass partners serve Chile.

You actually CAN get to SCL on US partners: UA will get you to EZE, and LH flies between EZE and SCL. Do not know how the scheduling would work out, but suspect that it's not that great.

Funny - I just went through this same scenario. This is a tough one. I am going to EZE in March and then flying to SCL for a few days. When I booked my award ticket (in OCtober), there was no way to get to SCL. I'll be spending about 6 days in EZE then flying Air France for 150 USD to SCL for 4 days. That flight leaves at 9AM which does not time well with the UA flight to EZE from IAD. Air Canada also has a flight from EZE to SCL that leaves EZE at 6PM. (not bad if you don't mind spending a day in EZE.) Lan Chile also has flights running all day but they run about 250USD.

So in short - it may be easier to fly to EZE and then just pay for the ticket to SCL as it can be done relatively cheaply.

Check expedia for the fares and flight times...or see if you have any miles on DL, CO, or NW as Delta flies non-stop from ATL to SCL.

Rather than connecting in EZE, I'd suggest connecting in YYZ. Depending on when US joins *A, you might be able to book a reward ticket on Air Canada through Toronto. Air Canada introduced a direct flight between Toronto and Santiago starting yesterday. Here's the juicy stuff from the press release:

Air Canada's new Santiago/Buenos Aires service will be operated
southbound Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and northbound Wednesdays, Fridays
and Sundays using 209-seat Boeing 767-300 aircraft featuring the carrier's
re-designed international Executive First service that offers first class
comfort, spacious 60-inch legroom and restaurant style service at business
class fares.

http://micro.newswire.ca/release.cgi?rkey=1112018203&view=13213-0&Start=0

The hop from PIT-YYZ shouldn't be hard to do on either AC or US (I'm guessing there will be codeshares on this route between AC and US at some point in the future, but that's pure speculation on my part).

Another plus about this routing: AC's brand spanking new terminal at YYZ is scheduled to open in early April. If you're travelling during this timeframe, it might be nice to check it out.

Hope that helps