I am travelling on a AONEW5 ticket but also purchased some others to accommodate some side trips.

I am having a bad time with LanChile at the moment, and posting from their lounge in SCL, where I have a four hour unexpected wait.

LA601 - LAX - SCL F
Flight was 5 hours late arriving, but only two leaving. One hour whilst they tried to man-handle some outside cargo in to the hold. This continued until the pilot gave up and told them to leave it behind.
Got to SCL with an hour to spare, no LanChile staff to help with my transfer to Easter Island. Got through immigration and then through domestic security in time to get flight.

LA841/842 SCL-IPC-SCL
After a one hour, then two hour delay I gave up and decided to go the next Saturday. Of course, it wasn't until I was off loaded that they told me that there was no business class available next weekend

LA571 BOG-SCL
There is a new rule at BOG whereby connecting passengers have to immigrate and then check-in with LanChile at the ticket desk. This is a nightmare as who wants a Columbian immigration stamp. However it appears that the government there has realised this and if you show them a connecting ticket, they don't stamp you passport, in or out.
The LanChile desk flatly refused to give me a seat in row 1, even though it was EMPTY all the way to SCL. Except that was for the crew who viewed them as crew rest seats.
LanChile keep your connecting boarding pass as proof of exemption from tax, so you can imagine what KLM will say when the Avianca connecting flight doesn't post can't you!

LA601 SCL-EZE
I had a C2SA fare booked for this mornings flight. At checkin they told me that it was now an all economy plane. They offered a refund, cashable only at LanChile offices, not at the airport. (I wonder how many ever get cashed!).This meant that I had to fly today or lose several hundred dollars. The next flight is full in business, not with people from 601 it would appear. So I am now on the A320 leaving at 1030 and then going on to MVD tomorrrow. Helpful member of staff who checked me in the other day and remember me changing frequent flyer numbers, so she did all the rebooking. What's annoying is that I got up at 0345 to get here to check-in on time and now I could have had several more hours in bed.

More to come as I attempt SCL-IPC-SCL (return in economy) and SCL-LAX in F.

Sorry to hear about your troubles. I hope you get your F seat.

I had a similar problem getting Row 1 F when on A ticket some time ago. Got gate upgraded, cannot remember if points posted. Totally empty. Perhaps no A inventory on flight so booked D. Did your travel agent list your entitlement or just give up with the D confirmed OK?

Got my J boarding card torn up in EZE when travelling on the next flight after missing one (QF delay of 5 hours in the old days) and moved to Y whilst on a First class ticket. The reason was I was confirmed Y on the previous flight, waitlisted D. On the new flight, QF got me a J seat as no A on the EZE-SCL run. Ignorant girl then saw Y on coupon but claimed she did not understand A class was first on the ticket and that was my problem not hers. Go complain to QF or BA downtown. err, no, now I am so late I will miss my meeting in SCL anyway and I am booked out about 0730 next morning GRU-LON.

If this is becoming regular, then we should get together and start writing to 1w HQ in Canada.

Spottie.

While getting "A" seats on LAN can be a challenge, I've never had a problem with them at the airport except for a more thorough than other OW carriers of the tarriff documentation. Did a South American swing entirely on LAN this past July (LAX-SCL-GIG-SCL-JFK) and it worked great.

I didn't have any problems either....then again, I wasn't flying F (or J) ..

Not quite sure why not, but okay.

Makes me wonder if your ticket segment was ticketed in D class. Most likely it was and they would most likely not give you the seat in that case. Keep in mind that even people with A or F tickets are not entitled to get row 1. I have been able pretty consistently but I always went in with the understanding that there is probably higher than 50% chance that I would not get one.

I admit that I have no idea what this means. Bogota is a pain in the arse to get in and out of on any airline. I am not saying that LA did or didn't do something since I wasn't there and their groundstaff outside of SCL is a bit shaky, but if you believe that you have legit complaints then just mail Enrique Cueto in Renca, Santiago (not Miami). From past experience, they tend to be responsive at the very least.

Having given up on Easter Island, I noticed that Lan provide F service to GRU and GIG. After a long conversation with reservations, they agreed to book me in to C as there was no D left.
Upon re-issuing the ticket (took 90 minutes as this trick, I now know, is that the fare must be converted in to US$ before LA can re-issue. There�s a hint for everyone), the ticket staff sat me in F as I had a RTW ticket, eventhough it should have been A.
At check-in

LA750\751 SCL-GIG (via GRU)
The aircraft had been changed for a LanExpress 767 so no F!
The provided a downgrade voucher and offered a window seat with the one next to mine kept empty. They did not manage to keep this last promise!
Flights were fine, on time, and the staff at GIG provided another downgrade voucher. I feel lucky to have got these as there is nothing in rules requiring LA to provide them to me.

LA600 SCL-LAX
Is now delayed 4 hours for no reason that anyone can explain! So I guess LA had the last laugh on me!

Is the downgrade voucher an MCO good on LA only or any OW airline? Or is it an upgrade on a future LA flight (which could be quite valuable indeed).

In fact the voucher is an MCO which LanChile claim I can cash in at any ticket office. I'm going to see whether that is true or not!

Well certainly I would love to have a Colombian immigration stamp. It shows you were there and actually survived the jungle that surrounds the airport. On a lighter side you could have gone to the "Aerocivil" (Colombia's equivalent of the FAA) counter and request a Tax excemption which would have added another exiting stamp to your collection. However the not so fun part is clearing the migration cues for entering and leaving the country. And yes with the tax excempt they give you a voucher that then you can pass along to the airline as proof of transit.

As a frequent traveller to the US, I did not want a Columbian stamp. You should see the trouble that my UAE stamp gives me.

Interesting... for what it's worth, I've never had any trouble with my Middle Eastern stamps (including UAE). I guess the relative crankiness of the INS officer you get may also plays a role.

Slightly OT for this post but sticking with the theme of LA, I'm fresh from my latest experience with them.

On the whole bookings were honoured as reserved, one minor grumble about a seating change when flying SCL-IPC but as the change of aircraft was to the superior Airbus A340, I'll let that one slip.

Having earlier berrated BA for its baggage handling in CAI, resulting in a replacement bag being hasitly bought in transit at LHR on the way back, LA then did its best to deliver this barely 3-days-old bag in a damaged state. Once I'd got agreement that LA should replace the bag (a Samsonite), it did strike be as a bit cheap that I should be offered a cheapo generic in its place. Still, I'm told that it's pretty good going to get anything out of LA at all.

Other sources of LA discontent:

Under-catering for full flights - am sure this is intentional. No champagne or red wine on the way back from IPC to SCL.

Meanness - a small breakfast in J on the ~ 5-hour flight from SCL-IPC. Dread to think what was (or wasn't) being served in Y.

Inconsistency of knowledge / information - Being told that bags would be checked through to final destination, only to see them turn up on the belt at the next stop; charging departure taxes when these are already included in the ticket price paid (I appreciate that there are exceptions to this for some Latin American destinations, which on this occasion weren't included in my itin)

QoS - the crews tend to be uniformly cold, so no great variance there, but the difference between business class seat comfort on a Boeing 767-300 vs an Airbus A340 is vast. Even the superior Airbus fit-out makes it difficult to get a good night's sleep on a longer flight (eg AKL-SCL), despite copious amounts of pisco sour imbibed beforehand.

All said, I suppose it's a lesser of two evils. From what I've heard about Varig's premium product, I should be grateful for what I had.

I'll second your comment, Virtualtroy, about staff on LA being cold. On my 4 flights in September that's exactly how I experienced it.

I found the crew to be excellent and very helpful. I had the pleasure of being given an email and phone number for when I return to Chile at a later stage. A genuine offer of showing me around the country.
The problems with taxes is a major concern. I waited at SCL for 45 minutes for a supervisor while checking in as I was going to be charged the departure taxes again. After explaining my first time in SCL was a transit and showing the printed out sheet of taxes calculated, (My DONE6 had 31 sectors. Hence the print out on a seperate sheet) I was informed "We will make an exception this time".