trucker

I'd like to use BA miles to visit as much of South America as possible. My wife and I have 215K miles between the two of us. We'd like to fly J class and would be starting our trip out of one of the LAN gateways in the US (SFO, LAX, or MIA), flying only on LAN flights to stay on a single-partner award and keep our award costs reasonable.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/onewo...rd-ticket.html gives some ideas, but the moderator noted that future questions should be raised in the BA forum.

I'd like to take advantage of the unlimited stopovers policy to stop in as many cities/destinations as possible. So, how crazy can I go?

I've looked at the One-World timetable to identify all the non-stop flights that connect in cities served by LAN. Here's the route I came up with:

Miami--Quito--Guyaquil--Lima--La Paz--Iquique--Santiago--Easter Island for the outbound (MIA-UIO-GYE-LIM-LPB-IQQ-SCL-IPC for those of you who prefer codes).

Easter Island--Santiago--Cordoba--Buenos Aires AEP--Iguazu Falls/Iguassu Falls--Lima--Caracas--Miami for the return (IPC-SCL-COR-AEP-IGR/IGU-LIM-CCS-MIA).

I know that past travelers have had success routing IPC-SCL-EZE-LIM even though it doesn't seem direct. Would tossing in COR and IGR/IGU be valid as well?

Just as a side note, we'd be purchasing tickets to the Galapagos and to Cuzco/Arequipa so that we'd be able to see those places as well, as I couldn't figure out how to fit them into the full north-south awards outlined above.

I recognize that I've probably broken some routing rules, but I wanted to start the discussion on the best possible strategy for stopovers on a LAN award to South America. Since we have more than the 160K miles needed for two roundtrip awards, I'd be open to booking additional one-way awards if necessary, should the routings above not work.

I'd appreciate any help you can give. Hopefully this thread can turn into a resource for future mileage maximizers. Thanks.

HIDDY

I reckon they both qualify for the most number of stops on a one way BA redemption.
If you can find availability for two on that lot then you deserve to get it ticketed.

guv1976

Please note this provision from the BAEC rules:

"13.12. Awards are based on round trip travel between origin and destination using the most direct route possible. Awards may be for more than one flight sector. On no more than one occasion per Award may a flight sector commence at a different point from the end of the preceding flight sector. It is possible to combine flights on British Airways and Service Partner airlines to make a round trip journey of up to a maximum of 8 sectors."

While it is possible that the eight-sector maximum on a round-trip journey does not apply when the trip is solely on a partner carrier, I would not count on that. I suspect that a one-way award is limited to four sectors, and a round-trip award is limited to eight, but I would be happy to be proven wrong.

iceman77_7

Looking to take advantage of this award as well. Would LAX-LIM-IPC (stop)-SCL (stop)-EZE (stop)-LIM-LAX be a valid routing? I would make EZE the destination, with stopovers in IPC and SCL. It's definitely not the most direct routing, but I'm trying to avoid having to pay the visa fee in SCL and/or booking a second, nested ticket.

dogcanyon

Hasn't LAN dropped the LIM-IPC nonstops?

dogcanyon

My advice is to skip Iquique altogether.

iceman77_7

LIM-IPC is coming back in Feb. 2012

xzolian

This is exactly what I'm doing in April of 2012, exact same stops and everything.

I did it as two separate one-ways with IPC as the final destination.

xzolian

I booked this flight in April so I hope not.

sm1234

dogcanyon you need to do La Paz-Iquique to make La Paz 'legal'.

There are also connecting flights available to Antafogasta & La Serena en route between Iquique/Santiago.

I just booked my first ever award seats today (coach-class hater warning - you won't like this!). Coach the whole way, miles+cash to eke out my meagre bag of points:

San Francisco-Lima-Quito-(Guayaquil)-Galapagos. Total cost (miles+cash; taxes/fees; call-centre fee): £130+10,000 miles

Galapagos-Guayaquil-Lima-Santiago-Easter Island. £135+6,300 miles

Easter Island-Santiago-Puerto Montt-Punta Arenas. £84+5,000 miles

The last one is a particularly cracking deal, as it's £615 on opodo (my entire itinerary booked on opodo would have cost me £1600). Which makes my mile-redemption for the whole trip worth nearly 6p per mile.

I've got a several thousand more miles on the way, which will cover my return from Patagonia to LAX/SFO (basically, I'm using airmiles to turn my £749 cheapo rtw [LHR-LAX-AKL-CHC-HKG-LHR] into a high-end rtw itinerary). For pure badness I'm tempted to try and get El Calafate-Ushaia-Buenos Aires-Mendoza-Santiago-La Serena-Antafogast-Iquique-La Paz-Lima-LA/San Fran on a single ticket (Go on, someone burst my bubble!!), which more or less follows the footprint of legal routings.

iceman77_7

Hmm... I'm trying to book LAX-EZE (stopover), AEP-IGR (destination)-AEP, EZE-LAX. Is this a valid routing?

sm1234

Iceman, I can't imagine why this would not be a valid routing. I've also been looking how to go to the falls on my return journey. The problem for me is limited/no availability on aep-igr. If you can find a ticket for one direction, but can't get one in the other direction, then igu-lim seems to have more availability so you could try to do something like lax-eze/aep-igr then igu-lim-lax. I'd be interested to know how you get on.

steve

iceman77_7

I'm running into the same issue with AEP-IGR, no availability, although available with LAN kms. The other issue is taht there's no way to check AEP-IGR availability without calling.

HIDDY

I can find AEP-IGR availability online without any problem.

iceman77_7

On the BA website? I can find it on LAN, but BA says they can't see any of the flights I'm seeing as available.