Also showing on QF on the 17th (JJ 3547 connecting with JJ8008). It's worth a call to AA to find out if they can see it. But, as said above, it's not an expensive flight and people are normally happy with the direct flight on EK.

Hm, can't find JJ 3547 and JJ 8008 together. I don't get anything searching QF but I'm not familiar with their system and don't want to take the time to figure it out.

I did search BA and found one itinerary which would take a little under 6 hours. It goes through GRU. They are JJ3440/LA6457 (very early morning flight, available 3/15-3/17). But at 30K miles PP for economy, it's too pricey and I would pay for a direct flight on Emirates instead.

There is also JJ3511/QR0773, but availability spotty. Only saw business and first class for my dates.

Would either itinerary be bookable on AA (assuming they can find the flights)?

Both JJ/LA and JJ/QR should be bookable using AAdvantage by calling, but as I said earlier, there seems to be occasional glitches with JJ space. I would call an see.

I can't see any LAN flights on the BA site. I tried searching on Qantas too but the search engine won't accept my airport code. I'm assuming it only accepts certain city pairs. I'm flying out of JFK.

Is there any way I can search LAN flights?

There is no entirely reliable way to search for LA or JJ availability. The BA and QF sites work sometimes, but not always. Even if AA can see availability when you call, it is still possible that the agent will not be able to actually book space because LA/JJ often do not return confirmation. And even if you are booked with a confirmed reservation, LA/JJ sometimes will change flights and even dates with no notice. This can occur both with award and paid tickets.

Agreed.

I also have found in my experience that LA is very stingy with awards from JFK, more so than from its other US gateways.

I finally managed (after about 5 calls spread over several weeks) to book a 3/16/16 itinerary from GIG-GRU-EZE. The agent searched for TAM space, and came up empty-handed as usual. When I mentioned that QR had a GRU-EZE flight, she managed to connect it to to a GIG-GRU flight on TAM. Total travel time should be 8 1/2 hours (dep. 12:09 pm, arr. 8:45 pm), but it will be in business class.

I placed the itinerary on the 5 day hold. When I called back on day 5, I asked the agent to search for economy space, but nothing came up. So I decided to lock this one up. Total for 2: $95.50 and 45,000 miles.

Thanks to all for the suggestions. Who would have thought that QR flew this route?

I've found that ba.com is usually accurate for finding gru/gig-eze/aep availability for me. Always have been able to call in to AA and book when I find space.

however I usually end up using skymiles on Gol, since they seem to have almost 100% daily availability and I have enough MR points to spare.

Anybody know how long it takes to confirm a LAN award?

I found an EZE-SCL-JFK with award availability on ba.com and called AA. The agent couldn't originally find anything until I fed her the exact flight details. I was told to expect a confirmation email but nothing so far. I do seem to have a record locator on my AA account with a status of "On Request".

Naturally, there is no more award space available via ba.com. I suspect this is not going to ticket properly... :td:

LA Married Segments?
 

Trying to find MIA-SCL which LA has at least a daily flight and in some days it has 2 flights.

However BA does not return any LA flight MIA-SCL for Nov. There is also no JFK-SCL availability, but there is LAX-SCL (via LIM) availability. Being in South Florida, I dont think we could fly MIA-LAX-SCL - either LA fare rules would not allow it or AA would not allow it....

When I put in MIA-ZCO though, miraculously there are LA flights showing up that MIA-SCL-ZCO and with 7! seats on the business class for the MIA-SCL segment! I wonder if the AAgent could see that? Do we know what fare class LA business award seat booked into? Is it the same U class?

Also BA does not show any availability going into PMC (Puerto Montt) and it claims no partner flies to ZPC (Pucon). I recon ZPC is seasonal service but Nov is Summer in Chile there are flights direct SCL-ZPC Fri to Sun, and other days it goes via ZCO but BA shows nothing.

QF does not even give the cities of ZCO and ZPC.

This is the first time I try to redeem award on LA flights and now I can see why it is a really frustrating process for many, and we are not even going to the more popular cities like EZE, GIG or GRU, and it seems all flights we are looking at are LA coded - LA mainline and LAN Express.

I am based in NYC and was able to book JFK-LAX-SCL (with a stop in LIM) earlier this year. I was never able to book a flight to ZPC, and I went in Feb--the height of the peak season in Pucon. I am not even sure LA has flown to ZPC in recent years, as I wasn't even able to purchase a SCL-ZPC ticket with cash.

I just called the EXP desk since I was curious about this married segment issue (trying to book a trip to LIM and similarly see JFK-CUZ but not JFK-LIM). The first agent I talked to seemed a bit clueless, but HUCA worked and the second agent was able to see both JFK-CUZ and MIA-ZCO, both on LAN, right away. She couldn't see JFK-LIM or MIA-SCL, though.

Friend just went this past Thanksgiving flew into PMC. His family of 5 tickets were issued in Dec 2014 as they had school age children so their family travels were largely in school holidays so he booked 330 days out for those periods. They flew AA JFK-SCL and LA SCL-PMC, returned on LA to JFK. (They are currently in Bali, again on tickets booked 11 months ago. He just replied my email from a few days ago because Yahoo email access from overseas non-recognized devices seems to suffer blocking a lot of times.)

I was able to see SCL-PMC Cash Tickets on sale on LA site - it is $275 one-way. There is an LCC Google found - put in Chile nationality I see a $69 fare, put in US I see a $225 fare. Put in "others (countries not found on the list)" the site crashes after searching fares for a long time. I dont know how much the airlines enforce the nationality check at boarding as I read from TripAdvisor or some other sites people just put in countries that are not subject to the "gauging the foreigner" pricing.

Thanks a lot for sharing your experiences.

Good to hear about at least you have found an EXP agent can see married segments. I assume the agents have to put in the Origin and Destination together in the system, versus trying to use segment by segment method which is very ingrained in agent's mind and our mind when we do our search. But I have found married segments have become much more common among many carriers.
I guess for us lowly Golds, I need to tell the agent to put in MIA-ZCO directly into the system instead of breaking it up.

The LAX-SCL via LIM has ONE J seat available on the dates I looked at last night. However MIA-SCL-ZCO offers hope. I want to see more dates open up for booking because I try to time it we would be in Asia for the X'mas / New Year versus if I book the Nov 22/23 date, we would be in Middle East for X'mas/New Year.

Since you have been there and obviously plan to return, how many days are needed to visit / enjoy the Lake District?
I also assume we can rent a car at ZCO for the travel.

Still dont see any bookable DOH-BKK flights on BA site despite it shows availability, it returns errors when I try to price it.

We were in Pucon for 4 days and thought that we could have easily spent a few more days. Pucon is a bit touristy (mostly Chileans based on our observation), but it's well developed and there are a number of tour companies that offer tons of adventure sport activites that could easily fill a week. We had a blast, and it was easily the best part of our trip (which included Santiago and Viña as well). We didn't get a chance to explore further south, which I imagine is equally stunning and would probably have added at least another few days to our trip.

Yes, you can rent a car at ZCO.

From SAN (or LAX) to Patagonia
 

I am planning to use my stash of AA miles (first time in 20 years) for two J tickets from SAN to Patagonia in Feb or March 2017. I have been reading a lot of posts and realized that this might be a complex task. I have both BA Avios (enough only for short flights) and AA miles. Questions are:

1. What is the best combined use of the two to give me the best chance of scoring two seats?
2. Would it be easier to fly into SCL or EZE, stay for a few day and connect using wholly within awards?
3. How easy is it to arrange the ground transport to arrive one country (say Chile) and out the other (Argentina)?
4. When using AA miles is it possible to travel on combined AA and LAN operated flights without costing additional AA miles.
5. The tickets are for my son and his bride. I am assuming AA does not have a restriction on using miles for this purpose. I am not sure about BA rules on this as well. (more reading on the BA forum.)

Many thanks.

On #3, do mean drive or take a bus between the countries or do you mean transfers from the airport to a hotel or do you mean rental cars within a country?

1) Best chance is to use AA to and from EZE and SCL. Within SA the choice between AA and BA miles might depend on how many miles you have left over which I don't know from your post. With LAN they often make award seats available to AA for just a few days after 330 days out and then pull them all (sometimes forever). Of course it depends and I often see counter examples. With AA its all over the map and very route and time of year dependent. Also, domestic connection availability is no longer certain on AA as it was in years past - the wonderful "new AA".

2) You should spend time in both cities. The order will probably depend on availability.

4) Generally yes. Of course it can be more complicated than a simple "yes"
depending on the actual route.

5) Yes you can do that.