Experience with LA800 (AKL-SCL) on Oneworld award recently?
 

I am in the process of constructing a oneworld award itinerary (150C) and have had great luck so far with every segment, including QF and CX long hauls, to my surprise.

The one difficulty has been finding availability AKL-SCL on LAN. I have yet to see a business or economy seat available, single or otherwise, on any date I've searched via both the quantas and lanpass search functions. This includes right at 330 days and every day over the next year.

My preferred day is still about 335 days out, but this has made me wonder if there's any chance at all of getting on this flight, let alone in business, let alone a pair of seats.

Has anyone had success getting a OW award seat on LA800 recently, in any class? Would love to hear details if so. I'm seeing routing AKL-LAX-MIA-EZE as a possible alternative to SA but that is brutal by comparision.

Early January - that is a tough time to get any awards in premium cabins to/from Australia/NZ.

Some ideas - try the QF codeshare on this flight QF321, try via SYD (yes longer but availability SYD-SCL differs from AKL-SCL and it is reasonably easy to get AKL-SYD if needed).

Have you tried (on partner award) Air Tahiti Nui?

There's no SYD-SCL though that doesn't involve LA800 is there? Slightly confused.

And TN isn't an option for a OW award. As far as I can tell the only options to south america from AKL on a OW award involve LA800 or USA connections. Am I missing something?

SYD-SCL is the same aircraft as AKL-SCL but sometimes there might be availability on SYD-SCL and not on AKL-SCL (and sometimes the other way around). Similarly due to the way QF's codeshare works there may be availability on the QF code and not on LA's or vice versa.

The only other direct(ish) flight options to South America are Air Tahiti Nui (as far as PPT then take LA) or Aerolineas Argentinas.

A few random dates, not Jan I know, but can't get KVS to go beyond end Dec. As soon as QF award codes are back on Expert Flyer, I'll happily take another look.

[KVS Availability Tool 2.7.3/Platinum - Apollo: ITN/US-BMB]
[KVS Availability Tool 2.7.3/Platinum - Apollo: ITN/US-BMB]
[KVS Availability Tool 2.7.3/Platinum - Apollo: ITN/US-BMB]

As far as I am aware the LA code will never show up on the QANTAS FF booking engine for SYD-SCL and AKL-SCL flights as all awards on these flights must be booked using the QF flight number and I also don´t think that an AA award will let you book the Qf codeshare flight - you must book the operating carriers flight. So for these flights using AA miles the QF FF site is of no value. You are better off searching on the LAN site (although I don´t know that you will have a lot more luck but at least you´ll be using the correct tool)

Sorry for my poor reading- I see you did use the Lanpass engine as well.

This past Dec'06/Jan'07 LAN was offering to buy back the very few transpac award seats it had given to Comodoros months earlier, so this year my guess is that it is going to take quite some effort to get award availability for Dec-Mar on that route.

LAN has some kind of technology problem, at least with that sector. I was waitlisted for paid A-class on a Cathay AONEx ticket for months. I finally called LAN directly. It took an appeal to supervision just to get the agent to stop insisting they didn't fly that route (not that they couldn't sell it) and a full half-hour on the phone to book it.

After which the FT community convinced me that QF D-class was a better ride, and certainly a better schedule....

It is peak season. Although a few more weekly flights now than a year ago will help.

60% more (5 per week vs. 3 per week). This has helped a lot with OWE availability, but not with award availability.

Its currently 6 per week ;)

I wasn't too precise in my previous post as I couldn't remember exactly when LA increased the frequencies (didn't all happen at once).

Thanks for all the advice. Just now LAN's website was showing two coach awards on LA800 on 12/30/07, but the AA rep on the phone couldn't see them. Quite frustrating. I've read here that they have different availability for LAN members as they do for OW awards, but painful to get one's hopes up like that.

I scored two First Class award seats on that route three years ago. I have tried again the past two years and found nothing in Jan. for FC or Biz. Now, I'm even having problems finding Economy award availability on certain SCL-EZE flights. There certainly is something going on with the lack of LAN award availability. Have they been learning from Qantas?

I've noticed that the US-SCL flights on LA have gotten harder also so it must be a chance in policy at LAN. CX, AA, QF, LA all much harder than they used to be.