Ilove2fly

On #3, I meant, taking buses from point to point in Patagonia region. I have about 30K with BA. Given Your comments on #1, I might have seriously consider buying domestic connections in Chile or Argentina.

Many thanks!!!

millionmiler

Yes you can take buses point to point around Chile. The buses are pretty good. Finding a specific schedule in advance can be a challenge although there may be an online resource that I am not aware of. Its much harder of course if you don't speak Spanish - not impossible, just harder and stressful. I have not bused around Argentina (except for a bus from Chile to Argentina) so I can't give you first hand information on that. I have rented a car a driven around Argentina and that worked better than I expected. Again though, passable Spanish was often essential.

As for Lan pulling inventory, that happens mainly on the long haul flights not the domestic or medium haul international flights.

As with booking all trips like this its best to start watching a route a month or two prior to booking to get an updated and route specific feel for when and what inventory is typically released. Long ago you could just call up AA and find something with not much advance effort but those days are a distant memory.

As for the comment on domestic connections I was referring to AA domestic flights within the US.

smilinganddialing

Few pieces of advice from recent experience:

1. For intra-Argentina flights, just take Aerolineas Argentinas (AR). It's clean, it's on-time, and it's fine. I didn't experience any of the horror stories of days past. I probably wouldn't fly them for international long-haul, but they were very respectable for domestic flights. LAN Argentina (4M) often has much lower frequency than AR.

2. AR is generally very easily available using DL miles (search on Delta.com or EF). Given that domestic flying can be quite expensive, you can get some good value out of your SkyPesos this way. We redeemed 25K miles for $370 - $450 flights. Felt pretty happy about it. Alternately, if you have the Citi Prestige card or any other WorldElite MC, you should get 10% off on paid AR fares by calling in.

3. LAN (LA) availability is generally very poor even for intra-Chile flights unless you want to fly at 6 AM. It's not a bad idea to get the LANPASS credit card from US Bank and/or transfer SPG points in if you can't get low level availability and book using AA miles. Managed to buy some really expensive tickets for a good price (just slightly more kms than low-level - this is a technique to block availability to partner airlines). If you cannot book it online, good luck with the call center - they are a complete cluster*.

Happy

Trying an itinerary with Chile being the first leg and am getting discouraged by LA practice in releasing its awards.

1) Married segments is a serious issue. While there are 5 or 6 daily flights between SCL and PMC, there is none available for just SCL-PMC, and only 1 day in the whole November I saw available MIA-SCL-PMC. Yet, there are plenty availability JFK-SCL-PMC to choose from. Not sure it makes any sense for us to fly MIA-JFK-SCL-PMC versus just MIA-SCL-ZCO. Or that AA even approves the backtracking itinerary with now they strictly enforce routing rules.

2) There is 0 return flight PMC-SCL found. ZCO is available.

There are much more flights between PMC and SCL than ZCO and SCL.

What is the logic that LA holding back the award seats on PMC?

Does it even worth to stress out on the PMC availability when ZCO is available, and the distance to drive is about 3.5 hr one way?

3) Several weeks ago I have saw SCL-AKL has 7 coach 7 business available for November when it was already well into the booking window. I was like "Wow, is this real?"
Now there is 0 business seat even at the latest bookable dates.
Our potential trip is for mid to late December. Now I think I cannot count on it being available even at the start of booking window.

Without this particular leg's availability in business, I would need to go back to the drawing board for the big picture of the full itinerary.

Has anyone had any experiences in booking the SCL-AKL or the AKL-SCL flight?

Your advices are greatly appreciated.

ajnaro

For SCL-AKL on dates in early April 2016 and AKL-SCL at the end of the month there was a good deal of award availability in economy on the LAN routes when I first looked in late September 2015 as well as in early November 2015 when I finally booked. There was some business availability as well but the dates didn't work out. There was availability for GIG-SCL (unmarried), SCL-SYD-AKL and the Qantas code shares (not bookable by AA) as well. I used the Qantas website for searching and the results were easily seen and confirmed by American. Of course, since I haven't flown yet, there's no telling what might happen.

Happy

Economy is widely available at 7 seats. Literally no booking has happened from the time I first checked periodically till now 6 weeks later - all the economy availabilities are still there. It is the disappearance of the business seats from 7 to 0 on all dates that bothers me a lot. It does look like LA initially issued seats then later pulled all of them even though they were not booked, unlike say, CX or QF, would not pull the allocated award seats.

More bothersome is, there is no business class seat at the latest bookable dates - signaling LAN does not release any business class seats.

Granted, Nov thru Mar are the prime travel time for Southern Hemisphere versus Apr to Oct. But not a single seat in business class? BA shows a QF flight to SYD which is DIFFERENT schedule than the LA flight so I am not sure it is a code-share.

JonNYC

Actually, for god knows what reason, for SCL<->SYD, LA flights operated by Qantas are valid for AAdv redemption.

ajnaro

Not in my real-world experience. There was availability for the QF code share on LA SCL-AKL on the exact date (April 8 2016) I wanted it but AA could not book it. I called AA twice.

Happy

Does the flight show up on BA site as a LA flight or a QF flight?

I saw BA site shows QF flight that is not the same departure time as the LA flight shown. I never see 2 LA flights on the same date but I have seen 1 LA and 1 QF flight listed.

Are you saying that QF flight is a LA codeshare? It has 1 J seat on one date while there is 0 on any LA flight.

ajnaro

Could this be a new policy or just a blip? I have booked international business awards on both TAM and LAN in the past. One was for IPC-PPT-IPC during the Tapati season.

JonNYC

All's I can tell ya is that in all of AAdvantagedom, this is one of the very, very few codeshares that AAdv specifically and explicitly allows redemption on:

ajnaro

It was on the QF site as a QF flight. Of course, on other days, the LA flights were there as LA flights. I don't use the BA site much anymore because it shows all sorts of absurdities such as LA flights in first class.

ajnaro

Thanks. I'll try to remember that for the future! In any case I wanted SCL-AKL, not SCL-SYD.

JonNYC

Doesn't apply to SCL-AKL

smilinganddialing

JonNYC - tried without any success to book domestic 4M flights in 2015. Literally 0 success despite seeing low-level availability on LAN's own site using LAN kms and BA couldn't see it either despite trying both as LA and 4M.

Gave up and ended up having far more flight options using DL miles on AR.