Planning a trip to the Galapagos May 2016 and I see no low mileage award availability (AA or UA) from Tucson (TUS) to San Cristobal (SCY) any time in 2016. Getting from USA to mainland Ecuador (Quito or Guayaqil is do-able), but mainland Ecuador to SCY is pricey (about $425 RT).

When I search random dates in Sep or Oct 2015 for TUS-SCY, I do see some availability, so I suspect LAN and Aerogal doesn't "show/release" award availability for 2016 (Quito-SCY or GYE-SCY) flights yet (not 330 days in advance, as expected). I could wait until Jan to look for award seats, but as a backup plan, am thinking about getting a BA credit card (50K bonus avios) or LAN credit card (20K bonus miles), and if necessary just use FF miles to book USA to mainland Ecuador, and using BA or LAN bonus miles/kms to buy domestic flight to SCY.

My question is: which program is would be "better" for this purpose; i.e. better chance of getting GYE-SCY or UIO-SCY? I'm not sure how many miles/km are needed on each program.

Not to worried about spend requirements, both waive annual fee first year, if I get the LAN Visa signature, will get 20% discount on LAN flight purchase if I end up having to buy it outright. If LAN bonus kms aren't enough for the flight, I could "buy" some miles which would probably be cheaper than buying the entire ticket.

Thanks for any suggestions