backeby

I'm visiting Chile + Argentina in a couple of months, I have one return ticket between ARN-SCL on *A. Outbound in April and going home May 4.

We're planning on going to Ushuaia for the last part of our trip,
the return flight we're looking at from Ushuaia is
LA7743 USH-AEP on May 2 1:15 PM-4:45 PM
LA7812 AEP-SCL May 3 4:15PM-6:35PM
Which gives us 23 hours in BUE and approx 9 hours in SCL.

I don't really have any worries about getting from AEP to SCL in time for the departure of our homebound flight home at 03:21 AM May 4 assuming LA7743 is on time, lots of connections with multiple airlines from both AEP and EZE.

What worries me is what happens if LA7743 is cancelled? It's the only LATAM flight for that day, and there are no LATAM flights on May 3 either. Would we be rebooked on to the first AR flight out of USH? Or would we have to wait until the next LATAM flight (effectively missing our flight back home to Sweden?)

I've read several stories about AR frequently cancelling and shifting their schedule around, would it still be better in this particular case to book USH-AEP on AR instead of LA? (I'm guessing that I wouldn't be rebooked onto AR with a LA cancellation, which I guess is the entire question of this post.)

jimmielin

Your experience may vary, but from the times I've had terrible long-lasting cancellations & delays on LA, they will usually stick to their own metal & if the next flight out is overbooked, tough luck. You'll stay at the outstation until they can arrange something. Since your flight outbound SCL is on a separate *A ticket you will have a higher risk, you might have to buy a ticket on AR on your own to catch that connection, asking LA to cancel LA7743's segment and keeping LA7812, perhaps.

While this might not be useful for your particular case, LA airport agents has been generally very flexible with their own tickets if there are delays / cancellations: From my experience they've been able to drop entire segments on the affected ticket & change completely inflexible separate tickets to later dates (still bought on LA/JJ though) to accommodate for the delay, but they will keep you on LA metal, probably on the same flight on a different day, for that particular delay or cancellation. So chances of rebooking are slim to none. You might want to check if your travel insurance covers your concern.

backeby

So an option, in this case, could be to keep my itinerary and if LA7743 is cancelled, ask the airport agent to remove that segment from my booking in USH, while using an AR flight to go from USH to AEP? (Booked in a fully refundable fare, hoping that I don't have to use it, and cancel it at AEP after I've arrived on the original LA-flight?)

jimmielin

LA has done that before for my case but YMMV.
Also make sure the AR fare rules really are "fully refundable" even if you no-show for the segment. It might not be the case. Checking the fare rules for full-fare economy is supposedly revealing a fine even if you cancel before departure, and a higher one if you no show: so this might not be a good approach since you'll end up losing the penalty regardless of the outcome:CANCELLATIONS
ANY TIME
CHARGE ARS 100.00 FOR CANCEL/REFUND.
CHILD/INFANT DISCOUNTS APPLY.
WAIVED FOR DEATH OF PASSENGER OR FAMILY MEMBER.
NOTE -
SE PERMITEN DEVOLUCIONES O CANCELACIONES A UN
CARGO DE ARS 100.00
EL DESCUENTO DE NINIOS E INFANTES APLICA A LA
PENALIDAD
SE APLICA PENALIDAD DE ARS 200.00 POR NO
PRESENTACION
NOTA 1 //REEMBOLSO POR CAUSAS NO IMPUTABLES A LA
COMPANIA//
DECESO DE PASAJERO //VER MANUAL COMERCIAL 13.8
DECESO DE FLIAR DIRECTO DE UN PASAJERO//SE
CONTEMPLA EN CASO DE PRODUCIRSE DENTRO DE LAS
48HS DE LA FECHA DE VUELO Y CON PRESENTACION
DE DOCUMENTACION PROBATORIA DEL VINCULO.
CHARGE ARS 200.00 FOR NO-SHOW.

FairDinkumMate

I have had LATAM rebook me (4 of us) on competitor metal when they made a huge mistake & we were stuck in LIma with a 2 year old, but even then it took some fighting.
We were on a Latam (Lan) award ticket JFK-LIM (LA) connecting in Lima to LIM-GRU (JJ). This was just after the merger. We arrived in Lima and couldn't get boarding passes from Lan, had to wait 4 or 5 hours for Tam staff to arrive. When they did, they told us we weren't booked on the flight & it was full! It turned out that somewhere in the merger process Lan had booked our tickets but the LIM-GRU leg hadn't gone through to Tam's booking system. Lan offered us the same flight the following day(it was about midday by now). I refused, argued, fought & was eventually given a flight at 7pm that night on competitor metal & two hotel rooms to rest in in the meantime(as opposed to the lounge access they offered!).

So my point is that they WILL do it if they think they have to, but they will fight against it vehemently. Living in or travelling via Brazil also helps because ANAC (the Brazilian air regulator) love to hand out huge fines to airlines for mistreating customers & Latam are very aware of it.