Award availability for Latam flights with SkyMiles (as opposed to Avios)
 

Last year, I booked PPT-IPC using Avios on BA's site, but COVID upended those plans. At the time, LA was making up to 7 or 8 seats available for booking with Avios for each flight (i.e. really generous with partner awards). I'm trying to book a similar trip this year, but now that LA left OW, the Avio route isn't an option anymore. I am able to book certain LA flights on delta.com using SkyMiles (i.e. JFK-SCL on LA metal), and I am able to see plenty of award availability on Latam.com using LANPass points, but can find no availability for PPT-IPC or IPC-SCL on any dates using SkyMiles.

My questions, which may be silly:
1) Does the limited availability have anything to do with LA-DL being a partnership, as opposed to LA officially joining SkyTeam?
2) Is there an expectation of more partner award availability as the LA-DL partnership progresses?

Carriers frequently make more seats available for those in their own program. Same is true for BA and LA, DL and AF/KL/KQ (all flying blue airlines), etc....

LATAM is not in Skyteam
https://www.skyteam.com/en

LATAM is still a BA ff partner. Other than AA LATAM kept the other OW airlines as freq flyer partners
But does not mean they are making awards available to BA

https://www.britishairways.com/en-ca...avios/flights#

I would keep my expectations for using Skymiles low because:

a. it's corona time and availability fro partners may be near zero
b. Dl is extremely stingy when it comes to awards with very high redemption rates - especially for one-ways and close-in bookings.
c. LA awards are likely not yet loaded for Dl and it might take a very long time.

I'd look into getting points on Lan using credit card and possibly SPG transfers (but looks like bad value).

Regardless of program, the once-weekly PPT-IPC flights have been notoriously hard - if not outright impossible - to book as award. You got lucky with your original booking. Regardless of program, don't expect such luck to come upon you again.

As said earlier up-thread, the best bet is probably to check within the LA program (AFAIK it has multiple levels of pricing, and naturally the best availability of LA awards), and if the value makes sense to you then transfer the amount you need to LA miles and book it via LA directly.

Actually in this case, that wasn't true -- see below.

See the thread below about award availability on BA using avios for this route last year.

Actually, I found copious award availability on BA.com for the PPT-IPC-SCL corridor (see my original FlyerTalk post here https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...er-island.html). That's why I was so surprised about the total lack of award seats via DL.

Yeah not gonna transfer my Marriott points as it ends up being significantly <1c/pp. But C is really what I was interested in -- if that's the case, I shouldn't be able to find SCL-JFK awards for LA flights on DL around the same time period. Unless they're only loading awards on certain routes.

It's very true. Carriers make more seats available for their own programs. Just because LA is offering a C seat award via LA program doesn't mean the seat is available for booking via BAs program. Same is true with nearly all airlines. Same issue with DL and AF/KL/KQ. FB members can only book what DL offers at it's lowest award level. DL members can book into higher award levels for DL metal. Same is true in reverse.

As for the last part, I'm not sure what that has to do with now. Married segments are a known thing. They're not going to want to fill PPT-IPC up with C awards, leaving no seats for PPT-SCL via IPC.

LATAM award availability via Delta has been spotty at best since redemptions launched. I've never seen SCL-IPC availability with SkyMiles, nor a single J seat on any US route.

They never were great with OW partners either. DL really isnt the issue, rather LA.

But again, that wasn't the case previously. There were up to 7 award seats available on the PPT-IPC-SCL route on numerous dates, bookable with Avios via BA's website, and bookable for the PPT-IPC leg only (I personally booked four seats, and another person I know booked two). So that's why I was trying to figure out if the problem was with DL not loading availability into their system.

EDIT: this was in J, too!

That's what I was afraid of. :/

I would also call. I would not be surprised if online and phone avail. is not the same.

Most likely it was a mistake. Not like it was so for years, or even many months. It just so happened at the time you were booking the fights - you got lucky. Normally, for years upon years, there's been no or next to no award availability, ever, for full 331 days out, for this route in J, and limited availability in Y. I've checked on it more than a few times over the years.

Just because there was a mistaken release of more award seats for a while earlier doesn't mean the same mistake will happen again. In fact, it's highly likely that the "hole" through which those copious awards got released has been plugged up for good now over at LA.

It must have been a pretty big hole, because I believe we found 7 award seats in J on every single PPT-IPC flight for more than 6 consecutive months (we had confirmed at least March through August)!

I'm sorry to hear it was a freak occurrence. I will admit that when I first saw the availability, I assumed it was phantom space, but the BA agents confirmed it before I converted my points to Avios.