The links to pictures in this thread are 800x600. At the bottom is a list of the same links but in small size (400x300) if you have a slow connection.


A few weeks ago my brother and I took a nine day trip to Chile. My ticket was from AA’s Fly Twice to California, Fly Free, and his was an award ticket from my account.

When AA offered this promotion, Delta matched it (and maybe other airlines). I decided to fly the promotional tickets on AA rather than Delta in order to get MRTC. MRTC isn’t a large amount of extra legroom, but I figured it would be worth it on a long flight. I’m 6’ 3”, and my brother is two inches taller than I.


Friday, September 17

Due to award availability, we had to fly into DFW in the morning with a 12 hour layover before the flight to SCL. I’ve been to DFW many, many times and had no interest in hanging around DFW for 12 hours, so I chose to rent a car.

Enterprise had a reasonable rate of $15 a day for a compact, so I made a reservation two days prior. I had rented from Enterprise once before and didn’t get the pushy insurance sell that I had read about on FlyerTalk.

The lady at the desk asked me if I wanted to rent an SUV for “only” $15 more. I thought, “You want me to pay double so I can waste more gasoline?” but said, “No, thanks.” She said, “OK, I will give you a free upgrade to a pickup.” I said, “I don’t like driving pickup trucks. That’s why I rented a compact.” She insisted on giving us the pickup truck, so I gave up and accepted it.

Lo and behold, as we walk out to the vehicle, there is a compact car. She pointed it out and said, “That’s the car you reserved.” I said, “Can I drive the compact car instead?” She refused to rent the compact car to us.

The next thing she did was give me the hard insurance sell. She said that in Texas you MUST have liability insurance, which costs $9.00 a day. Luckily I brought my insurance card with me (wasn’t sure if I would need it in Chile), so I showed it to her. Unfortunately I brought the card from the previous policy period, which had expired last month.

This stupid lady made me go back in the office and call my insurance company and have them fax over a copy of my current policy. No other rental agency has ever done this. All they do is ask you if you want to buy the insurance, and if you say no, that’s the end of it. This idiot Enterprise agent gave me a pickup truck that I didn’t want and wasted 30 minutes of my time on their insurance scam. I will NEVER use Enterprise again.

We drove to Arlington (south of DFW), where we used to live. We stopped at Waffle House for breakfast and then drove to our old house. The tree in the front yard has grown quite a bit since we moved (new construction in 1986 when we moved in).

We returned the rental car to DFW and went to terminal A. A three hour delay was posted on the monitor! Dang it, we had a 2.5 hour connection in SCL. At the gate, no announcement was made as to the reason for the delay. No apology was offered. They didn’t even make an announcement that the flight was delayed! All they did was post the delay on the monitor. I asked an agent what was going on, and she had no idea. She said the only information in the system was that the aircraft was coming from LAX and was scheduled to arrive at 11:09 PM.

I had made a reservation with Budget for a rental car in Punta Arenas about a week earlier. When I discovered the AA flight was delayed, I called Budget because I wasn’t sure if they would be open that late. The person on the phone said the office closes at 10 PM (or 10:30 PM, something like that). I said that I may not make the flight that arrives at 4:30 PM, and if so, I will arrive at 11:20 PM. He said that if the LanChile flight is cancelled, the office will know about it and wait for you to arrive on the evening flight.

I said that the problem is not the LanChile flight but the AA flight that connects to it. I said that I won’t know if I will arrive at 4:30 PM or 11:20 PM until I arrive in Santiago, and I am not confident in my ability to use the local phone system in Spanish. I asked him if there was a way to ask the office to wait for me to arrive at 11:20 PM if I don’t show up at 4:30 PM. His reply was “Do you know if the LanChile flight has been cancelled yet?” I repeated the problem and he STILL did not understand. I said to just forget the whole thing and cancel the reservation.

The estimated departure time was 11:59 PM, and we actually left the gate about 30 minutes after that. At least the headrest and legroom on the AA 767-300 was decent.

One thing I thought odd was that the flight attendants left the cabin lights on during take-off, and after take-off, they walked around the cabin and closed the window shades. I was resting (eyes closed but not asleep) at the time and heard the sound of the flight attendant closing the window shade. After she was a few rows away, I raised the window shade. I have no idea what the point was of turning on all the lights and closing the window shades on a night flight.

Dinner was delicious (sorry, don’t remember what it was). I ate everything except a few bites of salad.

I got five hours of sleep on this flight, which is pretty good for coach. After sunrise, I took a few pictures of the mountains and the landing.

Point of reference – some airports in Chile I will refer to later are as follows:

south of SCL (Santiago):
PMC Puerto Montt
BBA Balmaceda
PUQ Punta Arenas
ZCO Temuco
CCP Concepcion

north of SCL:
LSC La Serena
CPO Copiapo
ANF Antofagasta
IQQ Iquique
ARI Arica