Hi af fp, thanks for your quick report. Glad you had a good time while in town. For your next trip, browse around these forums and you will find a huge amount of information... from non touristy restaurants to high-end car services. Also, tips on how to navigate the airport, etc. etc. The airport is a dump but with a little information it can be a little better.

I hope you come back to these forums often.... it would be great to have you as a regular poster here.

On the issue of Argentine wines, please send me a Private Message or email if you want to solve your quality issues with the juice you get in New York.... I will be able to offer you assistance with that... ;)

Except when there are irrops ... LAN will disown you and expect you to find your own way to your destination (even if it's in another country)! Well I did get to see Lima up close and personal for 3 days, even though I thought I'd only be transiting LIM with 1.5 hours on the ground!

Wow... never happened to me with LAN (gracias a Dios), but its good to know. What happened with compensation, etc...??

No compensation ... There were over a hundred of us at the Sheraton Lima alone, Thursday through Sunday, and more displaced passengers in other hotels.

I think LAN only agreed to put us up in hotels after the Argentinos started to riot at LIM. It was basically LANs own doing. My original connecting 1:30 am flight LIM-EZE was delayed when I arrived in LIM at midnight on Wednesday, until the following morning (the gate agent told me that it was an operational delay and there was not due to any ash problem). Everyone who was connecting on that 1:30 am departure had to stay in transit overnight, with LAN providing a pillow and blanket.

That flight was now scheduled to depart at 10:00 am, then 11:00, then cancelled at 12 noon. The two latter LAN departures to EZE were put on decision until 3:00, but LAN wasn't prepared to waitlist any of us on those flights ... until the passengers started to riot.

There is no LAN CS desk airside in LIM, so we could only get help at the departure gates (there were many LAN agents, but none were prepared to help). The passengers knew that EZE and AEP were open, that TACA was flying LIM-EZE, and that LAN was flying from other destinations into EZE and AEP.

At about 4:00 LAN cancelled its two flights to EZE that had been on decision. We were all told we were on our own, and LAN would do nothing (including for those passengers in C). You can imagine the reaction. There were Argentinos with kids coming from the US who had been in the airport overnight, and many more who had been vacationing in Peru.

I think that LAN management realized that they would have a hard time explaining to the Peruvian authorities the potentially explosive situation that was developing, so they agreed to have us enter Peru and get us to a hotel. We were all at the mercy of LAN since we had to be processed specially via immigration to get into Peru, and escorted by LAN agents airside with accompanying documentation.

I was the only one in my group that hadn't been in Peru, so immigration refused to process me and the LAN agent disappeared with the rest of my group airside, telling me that she would return in 5 minutes. Forty-five minutes later, security/immigration was getting nervous with me stuck in non-man's land neither able to return to the transit area or into Peru ... LAN was told that they had to deal with my situation so they sent over an employee to try and figure out what to do. My guy Benji had only worked for LAN for a month ... so it only took an additional couple of hours to get the appropriate paperwork from LAN so that I could enter Peru.

Some passengers managed to retrieve their baggage, but for many, including me, LAN couldn't locate it, (and it was like that for 3 days). We were worried that it had been offloaded somewhere and would disappear if left unattended.

So my group went by bus to the Sheraton, arriving about 9:00 pm. I'm sure LAN paid a lot more in hotel and food costs for us than the cost of the tickets. This is prime tourist season in Peru and the rack rate for a single room at the Sheraton was listed at S/1400. The hotel provided a fantastic buffet three times a day. I never knew that Argentines could eat so much food! :D Sweet revenge!

We were promised that a LAN rep would stay at the hotel, and then we heard (via the hotel) that a LAN rep would come to update us at various times, but nobody ever appeared. My group made several trips to the two LAN agencies that were within a few blocks of the hotel and spent hours talking to the agents or on the phones to LAN CS and reservations, but we were given absolutely no help. One of my friends was told that the earliest he could fly was on July 20 ... That took care of Friday and Saturday. When we weren't eating :cool:

A few of the passengers who had been e-ticketed, and had logins on LAN.com, found out that they had been protected on Sunday flights to EZE (the airports were open on Saturday).

Since my ticket had been pushed from UA to LAN because of a US cancellation, LAN washed their hands of me and told me I had to go to the *Alliance ticketing office in San Isidro which they assured me was open on Saturday. Of course it was closed. I called UA in the US, and found out the because of the irrops, LAN had pushed my ticket back to UA ... so I had UA push it back to LAN. :p

I returned to the LAN ticketing office, and they still refused to help me, and wouldn't even call CS for me, insisting that UA was now responsible for me. A Mexican standoff ensued. I refused to leave. The supervisor then advised the rep who was dealing with me to call internally, and after being on hold for 30 minutes on 2 phone lines, they found out that I had already been protected on the Sunday 8:45 am departure. I got no apology from LAN, even thought they admitted they were in error.

(I joked to my new Argentine friends that the CS agents must have been trained by Aerolineas Argentinas ...;))

One of our group went to LIM on Saturday evening to beat up LAN (successfully it seems), and returned with a large number of boarding passes for Sunday flights, and arrangements for transportation to the airport. At no time did LAN make any attempt to contact any of the passengers to advise them of the situation.

This is just the short version of the story.:D
So that's how I spent my birthday!

Even France export @#!^ as do most wine producing countries. :D

I'm not surprised to hear this. LAN are not as great as they once used to be according to some LAN regulars I know. The consistency of the product isn't as good as it once was I hear.
I always think the true test of how good an airline is is when things go wrong. LAN seems to have failed big time on this one.

Good thing the Argentinos wanted to Riot.... this helped all folks have a place to stay. Hope you get stay credit and points for SPG....? ;)

Happy Bday Juancito !!!!! :D

There are exceptions of course ;) There is a very tasty Luca 2008 Uco Valley Malbec at Costco for $24.

I guess it helps to have a VP of Catena (and her son Luca) living in San Francisco! :D

Gracias Alex! I've had several hundred Argentinos sing that to me lately :D

At LIM I felt really sorry for the many older Japanese tourists who were stranded. Although they had young, Spanish-speaking guides, they were clearly at a loss what to do. Although the gate agents made brief announcements in English when the flights were delayed or cancelled, everything else was announced only in Spanish. I didn't have a problem since I understand Peruvian Spanish (better than rioplatense), but it's difficult to hear when there are so many people screaming and clapping :eek:

All the LAN employees in Lima appear to be completely English fluent - I suspect that it's a condition of employment. I spoke to them only in English, since that would give me a small advantage. Interestingly their English is largely without any discernible accent, although tending more to US English.

At LIM, LAN has ropes set far away from the gate checkin agents, which the passengers, except when they are called up, are meant to stay behind. Once things got out of control, the passengers crowded the agents demanding an explanation of what was happening, and security was called :eek: It seems that LAN has trained its agents to just nod and act as verbal punching bags as long as the passenger wants to vent. (The Argentinos pointed out that AR agents would disappear in such a situation, for fear of flying objects ;)).

There were a bunch of Colombiano chicos who were also in the same position as me - they had booked their LAN tickets via a travel agent, and LAN told them that their travel agent was now responsible for them.

One other thing that was frustrating was that the flight monitors in LIM (and presumably the LAN computers, took over an hour to update the correct flight status - if a flight cancelled, it would still be listed as delayed, and lan.com also had the same erroneous information. I was checking flight status on aa.2000.com.ar, and the LAN LIM flights were always listed as "consult company".

When I first arrived at LIM at midnight, we had been told onboard the connecting gate for the flight to EZE. I went to that gate, saw very few people there, and the gate monitor was not on. I checked the departures board and saw a different gate was listed, but the same situation prevailed at that gate too. I waited around a bit and saw the departure gate was now listed as on the floor below (without jet bridges), and delayed. I went there to find out the situation (although there were about 5 LAN employees there, they seemed more interested in chatting among themselves than assisting passengers who were now stranded overnight in transit).

Many of the stranded passengers would have been happy to enter Peru and check into a hotel, but since we were in transit, and our flight was merely "delayed", we could do that without incurring problems exiting/re-entering Peru.

When we finally entered Peru late on Thursday, everyone in my group except me, had been in Peru and exited that morning. Immigration had to locate their formularios, return them, and mark their passports with an additional notation to the exit stamp they had previously received. I had to formally enter Peru with the help of Benji, and also had a special notation put in my passport, and also got to skip inspection at aduana.

When I got to the LIM on Sunday morning, I attempted to locate by baggage and was directed by a checkin employee to the appropriate office, but LAN baggage services only open at 8:00 am :( As I previously mentioned, up to that point LAN had been unable to locate my bag ... In three days they should have been able to figure this out, since LAN only has one flight from SFO to LIM ...

One of my Argentine friends told LAN checkin that I had urgent medications (a little white lie) in my baggage, so another LAN agent had to accompany me back through aduana to where LAN baggage handling/holding is. They located my bag in their computer and then proceeded to try and find it (it was taking some time due to the large number of bags that were apparently in storage). They kindly offered to tag my bag on my EZE flight, but then I had to fill out the aduana formularios to now enter Peru :D, so I could exit immediately. :-:

Interestingly, the aduana agents in LIM (as opposed to those at EZE), spoke fluent English. That's one thing that has been apparent in Peru in the last 15 years I having been going there. Young Peruvians see learning English as a way to improve their socioeconomic status, particularly now that tourism is becoming very important in Peru.

Its good to get some perspective on LAN... they have a good reputation that is perhaps not as good as it seems given how they handle these issues. Thanks for sharing...

I have had a couple of complete service failures and the company response (even when you don't ask for compensation specifically) is "we don't owe you anything. Fortunately, I've never been stuck more than overnight (twice) with them. The first time was 4 hours in the salon VIP. The second time was an offer of a hotel before I even went back upstairs @LIM.

Their semi-rapid growing pains are showing. In 8+ years, I had only 2 delays that didn't exceed about 2 hours each (plus a handful of just minor things). In the past year or so, I've had more issues than I did in the first 8+.

Connection to an SCL LAN flight
 

Hi All,

I looked through this thread and best evidence of connection question was in Jan 2010, where someone had a 6:40 a.m. arrival and was connecting onward at 8:50 I think, and the answer was he might not make it.

I booked EWR>IAH>EZE knowing I would have to go to SCL, but thinking it would be a day later. Meeting changed and need to go on to SCL day of arrival. The CO flight lands at 9:20 a.m. I don't know about my chances of interlining to a LAN flight, so I am thinking to book the 12:40 LAN EZE>SCL. Any opinions on if I can make it or if I might get CO to interline when I check-in at EWR? I would love to make the 11:35 flight, but doubt that is possible and even 12:40 makes me a bit nervous.

Thanks for any thoughts.

If your incoming departs on time, chances are you will come into EZE a little ahead of schedule.... (not offering a very scientific answer, I know).....

Will leave it to the LAN experts to comment on the interline option.

Transit security only takes a few minutes. CO can tag your bags through, but you can't get a BP. You'll have to get your BP at the gate (or find any gate where a LAN rep might be when you get there) - this is if you can't check in online. If you have OW status or are flying in a premium cabin, head right to the AA AC, and they can help you. (Possibly not issue a BP, but will try and assist - just tell them that you are connecting and you don't have your connecting BP for LAN.)

The AM arrivals aren't usually too prone to long delays unless (1) fog hits the area, which happens from time to time, or (2) the State of the Art* radar system has an issue.

*The art is from a bad, bad museum

Thanks!
 

Thank you for the replies. I am in Y and don't have OW status, and was thinking with two separate tickets I wouldn't be able to just interline and transit but would have to go all the way out to check-in counters. Sounds like it might be smoother than I thought.