Getting to Easter Island in 2015
 

Hello!

I'd like to begin developing a points/miles strategy to get to Easter Island in 2015. I'll be flying out of DEN. After doing a little searching, it looks like LAN is the only airline which flies to IPC. I've been building up some point balances through credit card bonuses for the past 8 months or so and am gearing up for another AOR in January. I've posted my balances below and would love any advice regarding how I can accumulate points to get to Easter Island and through which credit card sign up bonuses this can be achieved. I'd also appreciate any advice on hotels.

Thanks!!

Current Points:
Alaska 25K
AmEx 82K
American 53K
Barclay Arrival 43K
Chase Ultimate 67K

Cards I've recently applied for:
SWA Personal and Business
SPG Personal and Business
Ink Bold
Alaska
Barclay Arrival
American Airlines Personal
Amex Gold Business
Hyatt
United Explorer

PS: I know it sort of looks like I've been randomly collecting points, but these are the leftovers after redeeming >$10K worth of travel in 2013 and 2014 (thanks FT!)

LAN might be the best for the whole trip. But also ANA has very good stopover rules on trips to South America. I'd do some looking at the blog articles and in ANA about that, and you can maybe get a nice South America trip with a stopover in LIM or SCL. From there I'd use BA Avios to get the flights to IPC. Both of those can be done with Amex transfers.

Another place to look is through the trip reports. IPC is pretty popular, and with a few sale/mistake fares I would bet you find some good stories there.

Haven't been myself, hopefully some others hop in that have experience and get you headed that way.

I did IPC this year in J. I would suggest choosing one of New York, LAX, DFW, or MIA and just concentrate on sale fares from those locations. LAN seems to offer them reasonably often. Use the points to stage to one of those places. The reason I suggest that is because Y can be had for ~$700 and J for ~$1500, which IMO makes justifying the point spend on the airfare itself much harder. I'd save the points for the hotels because those are heavily over-priced in EI for what they (generally) are.

I'm also planning a short trip to Easter Island, but i'm looking to go through Lima. I know LAN operates this seasonally, but haven't heard any news about it for 2014. Does anyone know if this route is coming back?

Lima is seasonal and should you ever have to change dates you'll be re-booked through SCL. That's what happened to me this year.

I general AA miles are great for redemptions from US-IPC. Other than that as others suggested watch for occasional LAN sales - you can buy a revenue Business class ticket for < $1000 during these sales. Much better value in my opinion than even burning miles as you'll earn a ton on a long haul J class fare.

Enjoy! Easter Island is a very special place :)