Originally Posted by
drvannostren
In the end, is there anywhere other than the BA search tool to display availability? I know I could search on the LAN site, but they'll show more to their own members obvs. I'd just rather find out myself then call.
As mentioned, you can use Award Nexus (
www.awardnexus.com). And contrary to what has been mentioned, it can be free
up to a point. Just click "more signup options" under the green Purchase button to be taken to a page where you can sign up for free using your FlyerTalk account info, and you get 200 points free, and every 90 days you can get another 100 points free (if you're below 10 points left at that point). Each flight direction you search for one day will use 1 or 2 points. Obviously, if you search a number of days, points will go by faster.
But the important thing is that Award Nexus is just an interface to BA and/or QF. So you still have to search one flight leg at a time (XXx-YYY separately from YYY-ZZZ), not the whole flight direction at a time (ie, not XXX-ZZZ). BA will often report "phantom" inventory (from many airlines) when you search connections, and it'll report that both on its own website and when you search via Award Nexus. And there's no guarantee that QF won't report "phantom" inventory either.
However, the other thing to consider specifically in the case of LATAM is that LATAM (to its own members, at the very least) doesn't support one-leg redemptions. (Officially, it doesn't support one-way redemptions, but one-way redemptions consisting of two legs seem to work, just not one-way-single-flight-leg redemptions.)
So, unfortunately, with LATAM you have to worry about whether you're searching for flights with "too few" flights or "too many" flight legs.
While you can do all this searching yourself at the BA and/or QF websites, as you've discovered, the BA website is really clunky. Meanwhile, I think you'll find the Award Nexus website much nicer. (And it's exactly the same user interface whether searching only through BA, only through QF, or through both, at Award Nexus.)
At the very least, even if you don't complete your search successfully with those initial 200 free points, by that time you should have a good idea of how Award Nexus and the BA site compare
for you and can make a better decision whether to pay a bit for more points or go back to using BA directly.