Stopover suggestions for S. America & LAN vs. AA on BA award ticket?
 

Couldn't figure out where to post this thread, so I thought oneworld might work best as this question involves BA, AA & LAN. If not, please move the thread to where it should be.

Want to plan a trip to South America using BA miles. Since BA allows stopovers, an open jaw and termination in the U.S. at a different airport than I started, I wanted to maximize my time down south and visits (even if they are short/less than 24 hrs).

I've already been to Peru/Machu Picchu. I can leave the US starting around Nov 27 or 28th. Need to be in EZE on the night of Dec 8. Will be back at EZE around 3 pm on Dec 20. And then need to be back in the US by December 23 or 24.

I had assumed I should keep all my travels on LAN so I only have to pay BA miles on 1 airline partner reward chart, but I wanted to make sure their business class (J?) seats are good for the flights to/from the States? Should I be considering AA?

I can leave from MIA, NYC, LAX, DFW, etc for most direct routing. I thought a stopover in SCL, IGU, EZE and/or maybe MDZ? Heard great things about Patagonia area (maybe PMC?).

Any thoughts or suggestions?

As Long as you stick to the 767 and A340 on LAN the business class is better than AA by a mile goes fully flat 15 inch screens. So don't consider AA unless you cannot get LAN business or the connections are not worth the effort. AS a side note the A340 is a better seat although both go fully flat the A340 is slightly wider but I think you have to go via LAX for an A340 so not sure if that is really the best option for you for a bit of width. I would go with LAN from whatever airport has the best connection for a stopover

Not sure how many stops you can have on your award but I would probably go for EZE,PMC and MDZ for your stops SCL is okay but nothing too great about the city itself.

PMC is great you can head through the lake district of Chile and even catch the expensive boat through to Argentina, it is a very pretty area. I would suggest staying in Puerto Varas about 20 mins from PMC on the lake with views of the mountains I am sure there are a thousand of these little towns though spread through the lakes so a bit of research would yield a nice little town to stay in if Puerto Varas is not your cup of tea.



Hope that helps and stick with LAN

Not sure if you've ever wanted to visit Easter Island (IPC), but if so this might be a great opportunity (as BA award considers IPC to be part of S. America e.g. included in the 80k J award).

P.S. SCL - IPC LAN flights can only be booked by BAEC over the phone, not at ba.com

Doesn't BA offer one-way awards on its partners? If so, you could fly AA one way, and LA the other, if that worked out better for you. (Flying AA in one direction would give you the option of including stopovers in the U.S., if you so desired.)

And in either case, I think that BA also has one or two intra-South America routes of its own.

they do...OP could go down on AA and back on LAN and as i recall, code shares count as the same metal and not two partners....i could be wrong on this...

Patagonia
 

Go to PMC, but stay in Puerto Varas. While there take in some trout fishing at Los Ulmos De Ralun Lodge on the Rio Petrohue> then cross the Andes on the lakes crossing (4 lakes with shuttles in between) End up In Barlioche, Argentina. From there you can fly to Buenos Aires.
^^^^

Thanks for the info on the seat. I might go via LAX on the return to try it out.



Thanks for the tip on the stops. I'll check those out.


Thanks for the information on PMC and Puerto Varas. Will add this to the trip.

Thank you for this information! I had looked at this with AA miles but the redemption was significantly more so I assumed BA would be as well. I had heard IPC was great with an RTW paid ticket but don't plan on one of those for awhile. I want to see IPC for sure!

Neat idea. I forgot about the one-way award option and the advantages it can have in some booking situations.

I searched around on BA.com for the intra-South America routes but couldn't figure it out with their route map and schedule. Any suggestions on where specifically to discover this?

Great thinking! Thanks!

Thank you for the suggestions. I will try to work into my trip! Did you use a specific website for research on the lakes crossing?

Routing
 

So is this routing a good use of miles?

MIA-PMC(stopover)-IPC & then IPC-MDZ(stopover)//EZE-MIA

or should I try MIA-MDZ(stopover)-IPC & then PMC(stopover)//EZE-MIA?


I need to do all the visiting on the front end of the trip because my return home (EZE-MIA) will be close to Christmas. I thought I could just purchase the MDZ to EZE or PMC to EZE portion of the itinerary.

they don't allow that type of criss-crossing. so if you go to IPC, you can't come back to the continent as part of the trip down. So, you'll have to buy a ticket IPC-BUE which may be rather expensive... or burn extra miles.

It appears, from the BA South America route map, that BA flies between Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo (on BA metal).

iirc, when we travelled to IPC on BA miles, the routing was
JFK - SCL (stopover) - IPC (destination) - SCL - CJC (stopover) - SCL - JFK
and we were charged 80,000 BA miles per J ticket (all travel on LAN).

This trip was in Jan 2008, so I'm not exactly sure whether the comment re "you can't come back to the continent" reflects a change in BAEC rules and policies, or something else.