I saw one LAX-EZE business award ticket on LAN on my outbound date on ba.com and awardnexus.com, and four available on my return date. (These were dates near end of schedule.) This is a single "direct" flight number (LA 2604 one way, LA 2605 the other way), but it makes a stop (and may even change planes?) in LIM.
I have both plenty AA miles and more than enough BA Avios. But BA Avios was charging 60k each way, so I decided to call AA to see if I could book with AA, because the AA chart shows it's 50k each way in business from North America to Zone 2 South America (Zone 2 including Argentina).
First of all, the AA agent couldn't see the outbound, but could see the return (and could see that 4 were available). So quite inconsistent visibility of LAN inventory!
But then the agent said that I could have my award put on hold for the return (to see if the outbound would show as available later), and that it would be 62.5k miles just for the return in business. Say what? (That sounded more like a first class award, but I know LAN doesn't have first class on that flight.)
The agent went off and talked to other people in some other department for about 10 minutes, several times, and finally came back and said that it would be 50k if I connected in Brazil but that Peru is not a valid connection point (per AA) for an LAX-EZE route, and that's why it's 62.5k each way rather than 50k (even though it's officially a direct flight, they look at the stopover as a connection).
Huh?
Anyway, I said thank you but no to the AA agent (especially since AA couldn't see the one remaining outbound seat and there was no guarantee that they would ever see it before it went away) and hung up. And since I had more than enough Avios, I just went back to ba.com and booked it with my Avios (which had no problem booking the outbound that AA couldn't see).
This is really annoying: AA has no availability in any months (beyond a few days out) for LAX-EZE on its own metal, and the only metal it theoretically has it available on is LAN, but then (a) can't interface to LAN correctly, and (b) has bizarre miles pricing rules for LAN's actual flights LAX-EZE.
... Is there anyplace online where these bizarre AA routing rules for awards are documented?