Flying in LATAM Economy to South America and Easter Island

This is a second installment  in my series of posts on our recent trip to South America. See my intro post Back from our family trip to Peru and Easter island: Bumpy start, awesome memories 

As mentioned in my previous post, I ended up redeeming miles on all of our flights to Peru and Easter island, despite not getting a spectacular CPM value. The goal was simple: minimize out-of-pocket costs as much as possible. This is a second year in a row where we ended up with a bunch of unexpected bills (medical stuff, car repairs etc). So, as long as I get at least 1 cent per mile or 1.25 cents per Chase Ultimate Rewards point, that’s good enough for me.

On average, I got about 1.3 cents per mile, though the flexibility of booking with award currency is certainly worth something as well. For example, I ended up changing our Miami-Lima tickets only a few weeks before the trip, something that would be tough to do with a revenue flight. Then again, you forego earning miles, so I suppose it’s a wash in the end. For my award flights on LATAM I used a combination of British Airways Avios, Qatar points and Alaska currency.

My overall impressions of LATAM

This was my first experience with the carrier, and it was mostly positive. All of our flights (6 in total) left on time, and the flight attendants were all super friendly. Seriously, it was such a treat after flying with American carriers where by and large, the workers just seem grumpy. I don’t claim to know the reason for that, but the difference was quite stark. Perhaps it’s part of Latin American culture. I will add that not all LATAM workers on the ground speak English, so have your Google Translate app handy. For the most part, we managed.

Some of our flights included checked luggage, while others did not. We flew with carry-ons only, but took advantage of checked baggage allowance when it was available to us. One of our carry-ons exceeded the maximum dimensions, but no one from LATAM ever said anything. For the most part, the rules are not enforced in that regard or followed loosely, at least in my experience.

Our flights to/from Easter island and from Santiago to Miami were in a Dreamliner 787 plane, which I was very happy about. I find that due to its design, I feel much better stepping off that type of plane, especially after a long flight. The worst flight, by far, was Miami-Lima, but that was totally expected. It was a red-eye, enough said.

Our longest flight was from Santiago to Miami, clocking in at 8 hours total. Fortunately, there were some empty seats in the back, so we had some extra room to spread out. It was a daytime flight that left at 11 AM, so it was quite manageable. I was glad I saved 25k miles per person by booking in economy.

Obviously, flying in coach is quite snug, especially for my tall husband. But we can still tolerate it during the day. Red-eyes are a different story, and I’m more willing to splurge there (to an extent). For example, transferring a bit over 100k Chase UR points to Avios in order to switch to business  class proved to be too rich for my blood. It wasn’t fun, but we managed to survive our 5.5 hour nighttime flight from Miami to Lima, and I even slept for 30 minutes or so. Entertainment on the flights was Ok, with quite a few movies to chose from. That helped to pass the time.

Choosing seats before the flight would cost extra, so I rolled the dice and we ended up together or one row apart, which was good enough.

The food was about what you would expect to find in coach. Not great, not terrible, just something to prevent you from starving. Alcohol is complimentary, and red wine is quite good.

I suggest taking advantage of Priority Pass lounge access before your flights, like we did. Thanks, Amex Platinum and US Bank Altitude Reserve! Although, keep realistic expectations. While Turkish lounge in Miami was decent, we found lounges in Lima and Santiago to be lacking. But free is free, so I’m not complaining.

Below are some photos from our flights.

Miami-Lima route:

 

Lima-Santiago:

Santiago-Easter island:

Santiago-Miami:

My son “stole” the red blanket from our Miami-Lima flight, thinking it was complimentary. I was horrified when I found it in his backpack. Fortunately, we had another LATAM Peru flight coming up in just a few days, so the blanket was promptly returned to its rightful owners.

Why now is a good time to consider booking LATAM flights with Qatar program

Through July 15th, Amex is running a transfer bonus to British Airways Avios. By then transferring the points from BA to Qatar program (free), you can snag some very good rates on LATAM, and I found award availability to be superior compared to Alaska. You can see my post on rebooking our flight from Miami to Lima via Qatar program.

If you are willing to fly in economy, your one-way flight from Miami to Lima will cost you just 10k Amex Membership Rewards points plus taxes. I will say, Qatar program uses some funky math to calculate fees, so double check on those before transferring your points by calling first. It does cost $25 per person to cancel your award ticket, which isn’t terrible. Rebooking can be a bit of a pain as I found out first-hand, but everything worked out in the end.

If you insist on flying in business class, Qatar has some decent pricing, just a bit more than what Alaska charges for the same route (35k miles), but with superior availability. Plus, the transfer bonus from Amex makes it quite compelling.

Bottom line is, I found LATAM more than satisfactory and would not hesitate to fly this airline again for the right price.