Flying To Easter Island in Business Class with American Airlines Miles
It has been a long awaited adventure of mine to visit Easter Island and we finally get to go this year. I can’t wait to visit the tiny island in the Pacific and experience the history and culture of the mysterious civilization. However, before we could go, we had to solve the problem of booking our flights with miles. We ended up using American Airlines miles for our tickets and saved a lot of miles by making sure to book the right type of award. It wasn’t easy, but we got through it… and we’re super excited to visit “Rapa Nui”
The American Airlines Award Chart Price is Expensive!
The only airline that flies to Easter Island is LAN and that meant we could use our American Airlines AAdvantage miles and redeem miles according to the American Airlines partner award chart. But it didn’t turn out to be that easy for us. American Airlines has a great award chart with plenty of opportunities to stretch miles, but getting to Easter Island is difficult for the following reasons:
- Easter Island is in the South Pacific region.
- We must fly through Santiago, Chile on LAN and Santiago is in the South America Zone 2 region.
- American Airlines books all awards as one-way and does not allow transit through a third region. That is, an award from North America to South Pacific that transits through South America is not permitted.
What does that mean? If we want to fly from North America to Easter Island with American Airlines miles, we need to book as two separate awards: One from North America to South America Zone 2 and one from South America Zone 2 to Easter Island. The two separate awards must also be paid for separately and here is the cost:
- In business class: 50,000 miles each way from North America to South America Zone 2. 50,000 miles each way from South America Zone 2 to Easter Island. A total cost of 200,000 miles.
- In economy class: 30,000 miles each way from North America to South America Zone 2. 37,500 miles each way from South America Zone 2 to Easter Island. A total cost of 135,000 miles.
Because Easter Island is quite far, we wanted to fly business class and that would cost 200,000 miles each. The one fortunate thing is this 200,000 mile award is that we can stop in South America as long as we want as we would be booking two separate awards. Regardless, that’s still a lot of miles!
Solution: The American Airlines oneworld Explorer Award
Other than the American Airlines and partner award chart, there is another option to book awards with American Airlines miles: The distance-based oneworld explorer award. This award works a little bit different as it doesn’t charge you based on travel from region to region. You basically follow a set of rules concerning permitted segments, stopovers, partners and then you pay a total price based on the distance. The explorer award often works out to be a far better option for award tickets that need to transit a third region. It also allows many stops along the way… a great way to stretch miles!
Going with the explorer award option actually ended up costing us 130,000 miles per person in Business Class. We will also be stopping in Buenos Aires and Santiago along the way.
Overview
There have been many explanations already written on the oneworld explorer award so I’ll happily reference the reader to one of those for the full rules:
- Amol from Hack My Trip
- Gary from View from the Wing
- Ben from One Mile at a Time (as a warning, this one has an incorrect response to one of the comments saying that connecting later on in a starting city is permitted – it isn’t. But Ben really knows his stuff and his advice is generally correct).
In summary, booking a oneworld explorer award involves following a set of rules, some easier to comply with than others. If you manage to follow all the rules for the award, your total distance flown is added up at the end and you are charged based on that.
You can find the award chart based on distance here. However, the sweet spots in the award are in the 10,000-25,000 miles range. And if you look closely, you can see the premium for flying business class over economy is quite small. Only 25,000-30,000 miles more for the full trip.
The rules that need to be followed to be able to book at this price are the following:
- The route can only include oneworld partner airlines and must include two partner airlines other than American Airlines. That is, no Alaska Airlines or non-oneworld partners. This was the toughest rule to follow for South America, but we managed!
- At most 16 segments can be flown. Easy!
- All travel must be completed within a year. Easy!
- You can stop in a city once and connect through a city twice. Pretty easy!
- You cannot return to your starting city until the very end.
- One open jaw is permitted on the itinerary.
The Routing We Used
We booked three oneworld explorer award tickets: for myself, Natalya and Svetlana. The award also included a several day stop in Buenos Aires and a one night stop in Santiago. However, we could have included even more stops and gone through Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, stopping in each for several days. With the explorer award, you are only charged for the total distance flown provided you follow the rules.
Since Svetlana’s turned out to be the simplest, here is her routing:
- Los Angeles to Sao Paolo on American Airlines
- Sao Paolo to Buenos Aires on Qatar Airways
- Buenos Aires to Santiago on LAN
- Santiago to Easter Island on LAN
- Easter Island to Santiago on LAN
- Santiago to Los Angeles on LAN
The total flown distance was 18,165 miles. This fell into Distance Zone 6 for a total cost of 130,000 American Airlines miles in Business Class! We had to pay about $150 each in transit and departure taxes also.
Using oneworld partners other than American Airlines was the biggest challenge here. The oneworld ticket is limited to only oneworld members. At the time we booked, US Airways and TAM were not members of oneworld. But with their entrance, booking a oneworld explorer award to South America is going to get much easier.
The restriction we were facing was basically that there are essentially two airlines that fly around South America: American Airlines and LAN. But because Qatar Airways has this one flight between Sao Paolo and Buenos Aires, we were able to work it into our itinerary and meet the rules for the award.
How to Book Oneworld Explorer Awards
The one unfortunate downside of booking oneworld explorer awards is there is no way to do it online. You must call American Airlines customer service to do this. Just tell them you would like to book a oneworld explorer award with your miles and give them one flight at a time.
You should find availability for every single flight you want ahead of time before you call. I’ve found American Airlines agents are not very good at searching partner award space so you need to do your own research. The one issue is that American Airlines does not show award space for many of its partners, including LAN, Iberia and Qatar Airways. I personally searched the partner award availability on the British Airways website.
The other thing I came across with all three tickets is they would accidentally charge me fuel surcharges of about $130-150 on the segment to Sao Paolo and I had to argue with them all three times. In total, the taxes were about $150-170, but they kept trying to charge over $300.
My words of advice:
- Find all flights beforehand and read them to the agent.
- Use the British Airways website to search for partner flight award availability.
- If taxes sound high, make sure they don’t have an extra fuel surcharge added on.
- Be patient.
Don’t forget to check out these other posts about using American Airlines miles:
-
The AA Award Map: Search Award Availability to Every City in Europe
-
American Airlines AAdvantage Off-Peak Award Chart
-
Planning a Trip to Asia with American Airlines Miles: Part 1 of 2
-
Planning a Trip to Asia with American Airlines Miles: Part 2 of 2
-
Adding “Better Than Free” One-Ways on American Airlines: Fly to South America for 20,000 Miles All Year!
-
How to Add Free One-Way Trips on American Airlines Awards
Cool post! Easter Island is one of my bucket list destinations so hopefully I can try this method one day.
what was your method to finding award space on LAN?
I looked on the British Airways website for award availability on LAN and Qatar Airways. Unfortunately, American Airlines does not show LAN availability itself.
If you don’t want to redeem an Explorer Award, Avios is great for flights from Santiago and sometimes from Lima. 12.5K one-way in coach or 25K in business, and no fuel surcharges on LAN. It’s a 5-hour flight either way and LAN flies their 767s with lie-flat business.
That’s also an option to save miles on the South America to Easter Island part. It’s 75k/100k miles with AA in economy/business, but only 25k/50k this way with British Airways. It’s more miles than explorer award, but I can definitely understand the stress relief of “not wanting to redeem an explorer award” after going through it. The one negative is that then you cannot stop in South America other than Santiago without using extra miles.
Lima is in South America Zone 1 and has flights during popular times to go (I went during the Tapati festival in February). That’s 30K miles one-way and you also get the North American stopover.
There used to be another advantage of the LIM-IPC flight which was avoiding the $141 reciprocity fee, but thankfully that’s gone now.
My understanding was that LAN canceled flights between Lima and Easter Island last year. Are you saying they’re still flying sometimes? Do they release the schedule beforehand?
Alright, I’m sufficiently envious! So how far in advance did you need to book this in order to find availability?
I booked 11 months in advance as soon as the flights back from Easter Island became available, but I am going during the holidays and I know from experience those days are very high demand.
Booked this trip last year. My understanding is that the LIM to IPC flights on LAN no longer exist. I flew coach in the bulkhead seat and it was fine. I really enjoyed exploring the island. Make sure to eat some tuna empanadas!
Nice catch with explorer award! I also noticed that SCL-IPC ticket price is around $600, which translates to 45k Thankyou points. BA avios are even better. But it’s not for coach.
I’m absolutely thrilled you did this posting. Easter Island has been on my list for a while, and I was trying to find decently cheap way to do it.
This is a great post! Easter Island is my list too! It’s also great to know we can do it with the explorer award.
Hi Inna, great post. Thank u. Can I ask your help? I’m planning to go with my boyfriend to Costa Rica, Liberia, from 1/1/15 to 1/11/15. I have a lot of all different points plus time to get more. Where would I find the best use for flight miles?
Tickets to Liberia are about $500 so using fixed-value points like Citi ThankYou points or Barclaycard Arrival miles is not a stretch if you cannot find good award availability, but you may be able to get some good value with miles. I know United has the most-convenient non-stop flights to Liberia so I’d try them first. If you can book a round-trip flight on United for 35,000 miles, then you should be able to get a free one-way within North America on the way back by adding on another segment later on and having a free one-way and open jaw.
I found this post and was excited to try using OneWorld Explorer Awards only to learn that it was discontinued April 7th, 2014. :(
http://loyaltylobby.com/2014/04/08/american-airlines-discontinues-oneworld-explorer-awards-without-any-advance-notice/