In my new Sabbatical / Practice Retirement state, I’ve been able to schedule some travel for next year. Trying to use miles and points as much as I can.
Chile has been on my list of destinations for quite a while – after traveling to Ushuaia in Argentina ten or more years ago, I’ve been wanting to go to Punta Arenas on the Chilean side and compare. Unfortunately, while I was dithering United dropped their direct flight from the US to Santiago as did Air Canada. That left my only miles choice as Copa with a change of planes in Panama. Stay tuned for reviews of that – I will say that the mile redemption for the trip was 50% of what it would have been on UA or AC, so that’s a plus.
I’m going to be in Santiago, Punta Arenas, Puerto Natales, and Rapa Nui on my trip. LATAM are really the only airline flying within Chile and I couldn’t figure out any way to use Delta miles to book those flights, even though they are ostensibly part of SkyTeam. That may be due to my unfamiliarity with the use of SkyMiles, though.
OK – here’s the money saving part which I found through a combo of google search and trial and error. If you are booking flights within Chile on LATAM, you need to book it through the Chilean site rather than the US LATAM site.
You need to be on https://www.latamairlines.com/cl/es
Rather than this https://www.latamairlines.com/us/en
Note that my login for LATAM Pass still works on either site.
BUT – if you search for flights on here and price them in Chilean Pesos, they are going to be a little less than half the price of the same exact flight booked on the US site. Flights to Rapa Nui were $800 each way on the US site (in business) and $750 RT on the Chilean site. I thought for sure that once I entered my US address, my British passport, or US Credit card they would revert to charging me the gringo price, but they did not. And now when I log back into the US site those flights are there and I can choose seats and everything.
You do need to read enough Spanish to be able to work out the forms on the site – but you are going to Chile, so you’d better puede hablar un poco de Español and google translate is a thing. Make sure your credit card doesn’t charge international fees and just pay for it in CLP rather than USD.
Now you can fly business for the price of coach (it’s a 5 1/2 flight each way to Rapa Nui / Easter Island) or use the money you saved for the hotels in Patagonia or wherever else you are visiting.
