Guide to Visiting South American and Easter Island with Miles Part 1: Using American Airlines Miles

I am going to be visiting Buenos Aires and Easter Island in December and booked a business class ticket with miles. I am extremely excited to be visiting one of my dream destinations. In a quick series of posts, I am going to go over the options for planning a trip to South America that includes Easter Island with miles. Although the way I booked my ticket is no longer available, there are still some good options with different miles programs. In particular, there is now a very good option with US Airways that was not available earlier this year when I booked my ticket!

Although I am sure it’s an amazing destination on its own, Easter Island is quite far and isolated. That is, it makes sense to pair an Easter Island visit with a trip elsewhere in South America like Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Chile or Peru.

In this first post, I am going to cover the options with American Airlines miles. Before I begin, I should state this is actually the most expensive option with miles. However, I still think it makes sense to go over using American Airlines miles since I know many readers do have a number of American Airlines miles from the recent 100,000 mile offers!

Which Airline to Fly

Right now, the only option for flying to Easter Island is on LAN via a flight from Santiago to Easter Island. That is, any ticket to Easter Island must have a flight to Santiago and a flight from Santiago to Easter Island. As LAN is a oneworld partner, this means we can use the following miles as options:

• American Airlines
• US Airways and
• British Airways
• Combining British Airways miles with another mileage program.

However, each of these miles programs will give us a completely different price for the trip to Easter Island so which one is best?

American Airlines AAdvantage Miles

I had booked my ticket to Easter Island using the oneworld explorer award and the ticket cost me 130,000 American Airlines AAdvantage miles in Business Class. My ticket gave me a relatively good deal as the oneworld explorer award allowed me to pay for the ticket based on distance and let me stopover in Buenos Aires and Santiago along the way.

Without the oneworld explorer award no longer being available, the cost to get to Easter Island with American Airlines is now far more expensive. As I mentioned earlier, flying to Easter Island requires transit through Chile. According to the American Airlines award chart, Easter Island is in the South Pacific region and Chile is in South America Zone 2. With American Airlines award tickets, you cannot transit any region other that the origin and destination regions on a single award ticket. So booking with American Airlines miles will require essentially two separate tickets:

• A round-trip ticket from the US to Chile.
• A round-trip ticket from Chile to Easter Island.

Cost

To figure out how much the full ticket will cost, we need to look at the American Airlines partner award chart.

In business class, a ticket from North America to Chile will cost 50,000 miles each way. A ticket from Chile to Easter Island will cost 50,000 miles each way. That’s a total of 200,000 American Airlines miles if you want a fully business class ticket.

In economy class, the price depends on whether you travel during peak or off-peak. For South America Zone 2, March 1 – May 31 and Aug 16 – Nov 30 are off-peak dates are you are charged off-peak prices. A ticket to Chile then costs 20,000 or 30,000 miles each way depending on whether you travel during peak or off-peak. A ticket from Chile  to Easter Island costs 37,500 miles each way. So depending on whether you travel peak or off-peak, a round-trip ticket to Easter Island in economy class will cost between 115,000 and 135,000 American Airlines miles.

Stopover possibilities

American Airlines does not allow any stopovers over 24 hours on its awards. However, I did point out that we must pay for two separate tickets already to redeem an award to Easter Island. If you take the option to stopover in Santiago, Chile before heading to Easter Island, it won’t cost anything extra. This is because we’re essentially already redeeming for two separate tickets. You can stop in Santiago on the way there and on the way back for as long as you like. Unfortunately, Santiago is the only possible stopover that you can get without paying extra miles.

If you do want a stopover elsewhere, you’ll have to pay extra miles. You’ll have to basically pay for another ticket from your stopover point to Santiago, Chile. Let’s go through an example:

You want to fly from New York to Buenos Aires, stopover for a week, then continue to Easter Island and fly back. Here are the tickets you would need to book.

• New York to Buenos Aires: 50,000 miles in Business Class (North America to South American Zone 2 award)
• Buenos Aires to Santiago: 10,000 miles in Economy Class (South America Zone 2 to South America Zone 2 award)
• Santiago to Easter Island: 50,000 miles in Business Class (South America Zone 2 to South Pacific award)
• Easter Island to Santiago: 50,000 miles in Business Class (South Pacific to South America Zone 2)
• Santiago to New York: 50,000 miles in Business Class (South America Zone 2 to North America award)

Searching for Award Availability and Booking the Award

It’s best to find all your award space for LAN and other airlines ahead of time. Then call American Airlines AAdvantage customer service. The American Airlines website will not show availability on LAN so you’ll need to look on the British Airways website for award availability on LAN. British Airways will also show award availability for other oneworld partners that fly to South America such as TAM, American Airlines, Qatar Airways and US Airways.

British Airways will not, however, show availability on Alaska Airlines in case you need to use it for flights within North America. You’ll need to look at the American Airlines website for that.

Essentially, you need to piece together your itinerary between the two websites and then call American Airlines customer service to book and give them the flights you found.

Summary

• Because American Airlines does not allow transit through a third region when booking an award ticket, we must pay for tickets to South America and to Easter Island separately. As a result, using American Airlines miles becomes a very expensive option.
• The cost from North America to Easter Island ends up coming to 200,000 miles for round-trip in Business Class and 115,000 to 135,000 for round-trip in economy class.
• Free stopovers are permitted in Santiago, Chile in both directions and multi-day stopovers anywhere else will cost additional miles.

In the next post, we’ll discuss a much cheaper and better option: How to fly to Easter Island with US Airways miles.