How To Visit Four South American Cities on One 60,000 Lufthansa Award (and No Fuel Surcharges!)

The Lufthansa Miles & More program has another distinct advantage in that it allows two stopovers and two open-jaws on round-trip itineraries in different regions. As another bonus, it does not assess fuel surcharges on most airlines that fly to South America.  With these two things in mind, I wanted to dig deeper and see what kind of itineraries are possible. While we can’t just randomly tour South America and see every single city, there are definitely strong possibilities for an exciting trip. In this post, I break down what kind of trips and itineraries we can plan to take advantage of the Lufthansa Miles & More sweet spot: 60,000 miles for a round-trip economy ticket to South America visiting up to four cities. You end up paying about $100-$200 in departure and transit taxes through various countries, which is still definitely a great deal to me!

Currently, the Lufthansa Premier Miles & More World MasterCard (full review) is offering an increased sign-up bonus until June 30 of 50,000 miles for spending $5,000 within 3 months of account opening (Update: This offer is now expired). After that, the bonus is expected to drop back to 20,000 miles. Since this offer is going to soon be disappearing, I wanted to go over the best award possibilities with Lufthansa. Last week, I wrote another big advantage of the Lufthansa Miles & More: How to Fly Domestic First Class for 17,000 Lufthansa Miles Each Way.

While this is a good bonus, the main challenge for most is the unfamiliarity with the Lufthansa Miles & More program: the rules, how to book, where to fly. The other uncertain part of the Lufthansa Miles & More program is the fact that fuel surcharges are being charged on some routes. If we construct just the right itinerary, we can turn 60,000 Lufthansa Miles into a nice South American tour. In addition, none of these airlines will charge any fuel surcharges when you fly from North America to Central or South America.

• United Airlines.
• Avianca.
• Taca.
• TAM Airlines

(Update: Although TAM Airlines has left Star Alliance, they are still partners with Lufthansa and award space can be booked with Lufthansa miles. I had an error in my first version of this post that did not list them).

An Overview of How Stopovers And Open-Jaws Work

An award ticket from the US to South America costs 60,000 miles in economy class or 105,000 miles in business class. It also allows two stopovers and two open-jaws. You can find the prices for different award tickets on the Lufthansa Miles & More Award Chart. If you construct your itinerary just right, you can end up visiting up to four cities, but you have to abide by a few rules. 

Stopovers

A stopover is a connection of longer than 24 hours. It can last two days, a week or a month. Having a stopover on your itinerary essentially allows you to visit an additional destination on your trip only paying transit taxes. Here are Lufthansa Miles & More rules for stopovers:

• No more than three segments are permitted in each direction.
• Any transit through a third region (for example, Central America) is not permitted. This will cause the award price to go up significantly.
• One stopover is permitted in each direction.
• A stopover in the region of origin is not permitted. That is, no stopovers anywhere in North America.

Open-Jaws

An open jaw can occur one of two ways:

• Start the trip in one city and return to another. As an example, you can start in New York, fly to Rio de Janeiro and return to Chicago.
• Arrive in one city and return from another. As an example, you can start in New York, fly to Rio de Janeiro and return from Peru.

Lufthansa allows you to have both of these types of open-jaws on a single two-region itinerary.

What Kind of Itineraries Can We Have That Visit Four Cities?

United Airlines flights will get us from North America to South America, but once in South America, we have to essentially rely on Taca and Avianca to get around the continent with few exceptions. Let’s talk about how to plan the outbound leg. The return is exactly the same, but backwards.

We can have three segments in each direction and can only have segments that are either completely within South America or between North America and South America. Transiting Central America is not allowed. If we are going to have a stopover, it can only be in South America and we have options on Taca, Avianca  or TAM to get from our stopover to the destination. These two airlines essentially have Lima, Peru and Bogota, Colombia and Sao Paolo, Brazil as hubs with many flight options within South America. There is also a flight from Sao Paolo to Buenos Aires on Turkish Airlines and a flight from Buenos Aires to Santiago on Air Canada. Although Air Canada and Turkish do charge fuel surcharges, these aren’t extremely high since the distance is not large between these cities.

Here are a few examples of legs we can mix and match for a trip to South America backwards or forwards:

• Houston to Rio de Janeiro on United Airlines, Rio de Janeiro to Lima on Taca, Lima to Cusco on Taca
• New York to Lima on United Airlines, Lima to Santiago on Taca
• New York to Sao Paolo on United Airlines, Sao Paolo to Buenos Aires on Turkish Airlines
• Los Angeles to New York on United Airlines, New York to Lima on United Airlines, Lima to Rio de Janeiro on Taca
• Miami to Lima on Taca, Lima to Santiago on Taca
• Chicago to Miami on United Airlines, Miami to Lima on Taca, Lima to Rio de Janeiro on Taca
• Los Angeles to Lima on Taca, Lima to Montevideo on Taca
• New York to Sao Paolo on TAM, Sao Paolo to Florianopolis on TAM

Putting all this together, here is something you can do. Say, as an example, you live in New York and want to visit four cities like this. I took a quick look and found decent availability for the next few months on these routes… to make sure the itinerary can be booked and isn’t just theoretical.

1. Fly from New York to Houston on United Airlines, fly from Houston to Sao Paolo on United Airlines (first stopover)
2. Fly from Sao Paolo to Buenos Aires on Turkish Airlines (destination)
3. Fly from Santiago to Bogota on Avianca, Bogota to Lima on Avianca (second stopover at either destination)
4. Fly from Lima to New York on United Airlines.

Of course, with the open jaw between Buenos Aires and Santiago, you’ll have to find another flight to travel between those two cities. Without an open jaw, we bring down the itinerary to three cities, but then all our flights are included. Of course, we will have to pay any transit or departure taxes, which amount to about $30-$45 per country and should add up to around $120-$200 depending on which countries and how many you visit.

How to Search for Award Availability

I actually find United Airlines’ search engine very easy to use and very good at displaying award availability. Just keep in mind that United Airlines has partner Azul, which is not a member of Star Alliance. With Lufthansa, you can only book the award online if you are flying partners in the Lufthansa Miles & More family, such as LOT Polish Airlines, Swiss Airlines, Lufthansa itself and a few others. To book on other airlines, you have to call customer service. But, of course, it’s best to first come up with a plan and find award space.

TAM is not a Star Alliance partners and award availability can be found on the British Airways website. To search for availability on the Star Alliance partners United Airlines, Avianca and Taca, visit the United Airlines website, enter your dates and check the radio button for Award Travel. The search engine will immediately pull up availability for your dates. For award space that’s accessible by Lufthansa, you need to find United Saver award space and this is the space that comes up with a Blue Select button.

The space with the Yellow Select button is standard award space and that’s only accessible to United itself. You do not want these flights.

Once you find the flights you would like, simply write them down and save them for the next step… Calling Customer Service.

Calling Customer Service

As I said, you must call customer service to book award flights on United Airlines with your Lufthansa Miles. You can find here the different service centers with their hours. The US Service Center’s number is  800-581-6400 and its hours are 8 am EST to 8 pm EST.

When you call in, simply let the representative know you’d like to use your miles and inform him which flights you would like. As you’ve already done the research, it should hopefully be smooth sailing for you two!

Summary

• The Lufthansa Miles & More program has extremely generous award routing rules allowing up to two stopovers and two open jaws on a two region award ticket.
• Constructing the right itinerary with Star Alliance partners United Airlines, Taca and Avianca allows us to visit up to four cities in South America on a single itinerary for just 60,000 miles.
• There is no phone booking fee and no close-in booking fee. Lufthansa Miles are a great way to take advantage of United and Star Alliance last minute award availability without incurring the usual fees for booking too close.