cygone

Sapman,

I have two bookings for two tickets each to Satiago Chile in business class one in November and one in January, I can only use one of them I think I am going to cancel the one in November if you want I can probably just change the name on the booking and you could pick it up with your miles.

satori

Taxes for SFO-SCL were $283.15. I had sticker shock. Add on the $100 tourist entry fee and that runs $775 for the two of us just to get there (albeit in business class).

Makes my ANA first class award from LAX-AKL ticket taxes of $19 seem like a real award ticket.

What are the taxes for other destinations in Central and South America?

SAPMAN

cygone, Thanks for the offer. But I will be busy in Nov. and going to do a long trip to Japan and NZ in late Jan, so need to have some time before that to get stuff done. Maybe someone else wants them?

davistev

Travelling around Latin America is expensive. Aside from Africa, I would rank Latin America as the most expensive place to travel in the world where taxes are concerned. I have never heard of a Latin American country that does not have a departure tax that needs to be paid at the airport. Often, tickets may say that taxes have been paid but in my experience this means nothing - the rank and file at the airport always asks for more money. (the airport I hate the most is SJO which charges $26 tax if your connecting flight departs after ONLY 12 hours).

The average departure tax throughout Central America is $25 per departure. South America can be higher (Brazil and Chile come to mind, the latter has an arrival tax depending on your citizenship - USA & Australia get hit hard).

I was actually thinking of redeeming more miles but once I added on GlobalPass fees (from $25 to $50), Departure taxes ($25 to $50), Ticket taxes built in ($0 to $75) and change fees ($35), for each ticket I am looking at anywhere from $85 to $205 per ticket in fees alone.

Not cheap and something to think about when redeeming all the miles. Out of our 2 million miles, we redeemed 1.6 million with GlobalPass. 400,000 miles left. I may just keep them with GlobalPass and see how their new business model pans out. If their prices are competitive, I will certainly give them my business in the future. The promotion was a great deal.

milesrus

The program ends June 30, leaving them there gives you no value ever!

cygone

GP charged me 50.20 for two tickets to Ecuador and 51.40 for two tickets to Costa Rica. Was in Ecuador a couple of months ago and they have a $25.00 departure tax. Costa Rica has gone up from $18.00 to $26 in the past couple of years. Roatan has a $10.00 entry chage and a $25.00 departure tax. Have not ticketed my Chile flight yet but know it will be expensive. I think the departure tax for Peru is $25.00 as well, Peru even has a departure tax for domestic flights but it is less than international flights. Mexico departure taxes seem to be based on the Airport your depart from. Paid a lot of money (can't remember exactly from Cozumel) and not much from Mexico City. Have not been to Mexico in at least five years however.

Was in Asia this past summer, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos all have departure taxes of around twenty five dollars. What gets me angry sometimes are the hidden charges like VISA fees. China, India, Kenya, and Brazil have some incredible charges.

cygone

Davistev,

Take a look at the new redemption levels before you decide to participate in the program. Understand you can not use any bonus miles until you earn new miles in the GP program, they will release one bonus mile for each mile you earn in the new program. In order to have all your bonus miles (400,000) released you will have to spend $100,000 on airline tickets, (one hundred thousand dollars that is not a misprint). You may be able to save a little with purchases from the Global Mall, but I believe you would still have to spend at least $75,000 to have all your miles released.

Global pass internet booking engine also ads substantial surcharges to any ticket they issue making them more expensive than any other internet site. If you decide to be loyal and stick with the program you will be rewarded (after spending between $75,000 and $100,000) with enough miles (800,000 including your 400,000 mile bonus) to purchase two business class tickets to South America and you will still pay a delivery fee for the tickets.

I know naysayers have been stating this program would fail before it even started but now the writting is on the wall. A frequent flyer program without any participating airlines? I have seen some pretty wacky business plans but this one is incredible. To break business plan down simply: GP expects to add 10% to the price of whatever they sell on the site. $100,000 in airline tickets could be purchased for $90,000 from other sites. Remember: if you are not a Million mile bonus baby $100,000 spent at the GP site will only get you one $2,600 dollar ticket. Who do you know who will spend 10% to get a 2.6% return? When you consider you will pay less for tickets at airline sites and receive legitimate bonus miles for the booking, you have to wonder who will be using Global Pass.

It is not that I am not grateful for the bonuses, I am, my family has benefited a great deal from this promotion but waiting to use the miles is not a good idea. I just donated some tickets to an organization from the University of California at Santa Barbara called Engineers without borders, they are doing a reconstruction of water supply system in a small town in Peru this winter. If you can't use the miles please don't throw them away, many organizations are looking for tickets to Central and South America and are more than willing to pay the taxes on the ticket: they will tell you what name to put on the reservation. Although selling frequent flyer miles is banned, gifting tickets is allowed by this program!

tvl4free

I would appreciate hearing about this and other charities where mebbe I might put some of my remaining miles to good use. Any suggestions and phone numbers?


I had a feeling this was going to happen w GP, so began making inquiries in another thread, but I didn't get much response.

SAPMAN

cygone and others:

I heard the complex New GP program will let one BUY new miles and use them with 50% of old miles. Also heard this would be equivalent of about a 20% savings - and one could book on any legacy airline such as AA, UA.

This is a complicated program, I guess, and not exactly sure how it works. But I understood one did not have to buy tickets (and get the NEW miles), build up to 1/2 of needed miles, and then get Award miles.

If someone understands this better, perhaps he/she can give an example on how to use OLD bonus miles. For example, a $400 ticket to SJO and how to get it.
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I don't think I would ever get more expensive tickets thru GP (to earn new miles) and "hope" they stay around long enough so as to be able to use the Bonus miles. Especially with their poor web site, high fees for various services, poor telephone hours, rare call backs with info, etc.

cygone, how are the donees going to be able to use the donated miles? Don't they have same restrictions as we do?

satori

Apparently we had a communication issue. I work with numbers all day long and I asked the agent to verify that the taxes were $283.15 and that is the number she repeated. It turns out the ticket cost is $2,083.15, but the actual taxes are only about $75 for the award.

I just saved $400 on my LatinPass 2 trip .

cygone

Sapman,

Four hundred dollar ticket, would cost 54,000 miles in new program. You may use your bonus miles for half of an award ticket so you would have to buy 27,000 miles to release 27,000 bonus miles. Miles cost $15 per thousand: $400 ticket in new GP program costs 27,000 bonus miles and $405! Golbal pass adds a surcharge to all tickets! If ticket is available with Global Pass booking engine for $400 it is more than likely available at TACA or other airline website for $360. If that is a 20% savings, than I need to go back to school. The math just does not add up or make any sense.

I know this sound absurd but I actually tried to book a ticket las week with United and the Global Pass "new program" using bonus miles and it was far cheaper to use no miles and book on the United site. You may book with any airline but you will not pay the lowest available fare using the Global Pass booking engine.

Your question about donated miles is a good one: you can not donate miles, you can book a ticket and donate the ticket to an individual. You must contact the charity and find out when and who will use the ticket. I am trying to find out more now, how many more tickets Engineers without Borders needs. When I get information I will post it here.

NickB

Cygone is right on the new program. The surcharge added by GP (hidden in the overall price, BTW, rather than identified separately) varies on airline, route and price (how exactly I cannot fathom) but can be quite substantial. On some low-ish value tickets, it can work OK if you are just using existing miles + 'freed' bonus miles. Without that, however, I just cannot see how buying on the GP site provides value. They would have to give you a heck of a lot more than 4 GP miles per dollar spent for it to be reasonable value. Under the current system, in the majority of cases, you would lose value by using the GP engine. I got a ticket from them using the new system (so that my 'freed' bonus miles + newly acquired miles would not be swallowed up by old style awards I was about to order) and it was not tremendous value, but nonetheless OK in my circumstances as I was using some available miles. If you don't already have a substantial amount of miles available (for at least something in the region of half the value of the ticket you want to get), it is just not worth it.

cygone

To be fair I should clarify one issue. If you have earned a great many miles in the program, (traveled extensively on TACA, hotel stays etc) and had the miles credited to GP than you MAY get some value from the new program. I did say may because you also may not. If you have been issued an award ticket recently you probably have no bonus miles you can use.

My example best demonstrates this: I am HH Diamond, have had over150 stays credited to LP/GP. I like almost everybody (sorry Flight Hound) have had award tickets issued including a couple fairly recently. In GPs existing program they use up all your earned miles first and then use your bonus miles. Even though I had earned over one hundred thousand miles since the LP run I was not entitled to use any when I tried to get a two hundred dollar ticket last week. I was told my most recent awards had cleared my cache of available earned miles. With no earned miles to free up bonus miles I had no usable bonus miles! Confusing yes, I am sure the creators of this program have read one of my favoriet books "Catch 22".

BOA VIAGEM

I too am thankful I just happened to log onto flyertalk (thanks for those e-mails) I would have waited and it would have been (or is?) too late. I did the 500,000 run and have used all but about 70K+, and was going to do a KLM tkt. guess I need to contact them Monday. Hey gang "thanks again" for keeping us up-to-date. I hate to see GlobalPass not make it they have been VERY good to me! A little more work to get a reward, but worth it. BURN those miles

SAPMAN

Bob,. From what we have seen, not much chance of getting a KLM award. But if you do, let others on this forum how you did it!! Good Luck