I am a Platinum Member of AA and receintly experianced a horible situation with LAN while in Buenos Aires.

My wife and I along with my 1 Yr old Daughter were traveling from EZE to SCL then to BOG on LAN J CLASS (even though the J Class on Lan is like economy Deluxe!).

At the boarding gate, pre board was started and I presented the agent with our passes, and was told we could not board the plane cuz we were the wrong colour!

Now remember that Both my wife and I were in J class, Platinum Members of ONE WORLD, and traveling with an infant. My wife is Asian and clearly this was a Racist statement.

When I told the agent that she needed to do her job and stop this nonsence along with reminding her our status, J class tickets and infant she still refused to allow us to board (repeating this racist statement for a second time) and called the police to have me removed from the boarding area.

Were were then put on a TACA flight to Bogota with horrible service.

Can I get some advice from my fellow frequent fliers.

LAN is quite famous for not doing preboard for anyone, probably all the regular LAN flyers on FT have also experienced this, and managed not to get detained by the police in the process. My advice would be to take it in stride as a travel experience, and expect that airlines around the world are different, and service is often inconsistent with airline policy.