LAN Airlines – the very large airline group in South America has a great business class fare from Mexico City to Easter Island for about $1,100. The fare allows for an unlimited number of stopovers in South America.

Let’s start with a simple itinerary from the US to Easter Island with a brief layover in Mexico City. We will then work toward adding stopovers so that you can visit Lima (and potentially Machu Picchu) and/or Santiago de Chile.

If you don’t want to start in Mexico City, this fare is also available for about $100 more from:

• Tijuana (good for those in Southern California – you might be able avoid the whole positioning flight altogether)
• Monterrey
• All these will connect through Mexico City. The flights from Tijuana / Monterrey to Mexico will be operated by Aeromexico under LAN codeshare.

Basic – Tools to Finding this Itinerary

• Beginner’s Guide to Matrix by ITA Software
• How to Read Airfare Rules
• How to Book a Quasi-Complex Itinerary

What You Can Do With this Fare Illustrated.

You can stopover in Mexico City, Lima, Santiago de Chile and potentially Buenos Aires before going to Easter Island or vice versa. In Lima, you can do a separate trip to Machu Picchu for example. This fare is very flexible!

Easy Itinerary – Visit Mexico City + Easter Island.

This will be the easiest itinerary to ticket. To do this is simple:

• Buy a ticket from where you live to Mexico City. Mexico City tends to be expensive, but it should be no more than $700. So for less than $1,800, you can fly to Easter Island, plus potentially visit Mexico City, Lima, and Santiago de Chile. That’s a great deal especially since most of the travel is in LAN’s very good business class seat.
• Here’s a fare from Los Angeles around the dates that we found that have availability from Mexico City to Easter Island. If you have miles, use them instead.

• Then look for availability from Mexico City to Easter Island. Here’s a screenshot of the ITA Search:

• It should result in this:

So now that we found availability, let’s do our standard deal sheet and then do a stopover itinerary in Lima.

Sample Travel Date:

• Los Angeles to Mexico City
  • October 9th – 18th
• Mexico City to Easter Island
  • October 9th – 16th
• We put a 8+ hour layover on the outbound to ensure we make our connection. On the return, we have 2 days to spend in Mexico City

Fare Availability:

• Valid for travel until November 30th. Use ITA Software Matrix Airfare Search and flexible month search to see availability — enable advanced routing codes and enter “la+”  on the outbound and return fields to search only LAN availability. Must purchase by June 9th and 97 days in advance of travel. Make sure on ITA, you select Business on the Cabin drop down. With a 97 day advance purchase period, this fare is really valid from late September – November 30th.
• Beginner’s Guide on How to Use Matrix by ITA Software
• How to Read Airfare Rules and Use It to Your Advantage

Partner Fare Class:

• I

Routing:

• MEX – LIM (Lima) – SCL (Santiago de Chile) – IPC (Easter Island) – SCL – EZE (Buenos Aires) – LIM – MEX

Mileage:

• 14,118 status miles or 7.1 cents per mile (for a business class fare, this is great) or 17,645 redeemable miles or 5.7 cents per mile.  LAN is a member of the Oneworld Alliance and is an American Airlines partner. This fare will earn 125% redeemable mileage with American and 100% elite status miles.

How to Ticket:

• The fare rules states the fare must be issued in Mexico, meaning, we need to find a Mexican online travel agency. Expedia has a Mexican site – Expedia.com.mx – so we used that.
• Use dates found on ITA Software Matrix Airfare Search and ticket on Expedia.com.mx
• If your espanol es mal, use Chrome which has an auto-translate feature — we will do some Expedia.com.mx screenshots for you in Spanish for those users on Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer

 

Complex Itinerary – Stopover in Lima or Santiago de Chile

There’s no easy way to search for this fare. You just need to plug in dates and play around to get it. You are basically looking for segments in I class.

So use the multi-city functionality on ITA to find availability. Then go to Expedia.com.mx and use the “Varios destinos” to search for it.

Here’s an itinerary with a stopover in Lima. Lima is our favorite city for food in South America.

• Mexico City – Lima. October 9th (remember, Mexico uses an international date format of DATE / MONTH / YEAR)
• Lima – Easter Island. October 12th
• Easter Island – Mexico City. October 16th

We have managed to do stopovers in both Lima and Santiago de Chile. Buenos Aires is possible as a stopover point as evident by the simple itinerary above, but we cannot find availability.

There you have it. We think Easter Island is something everyone should cross off their bucket list. The team is glad we traveled there in 2011, also in Business Class with LAN.

Some caveats that we want to point out:

• DO NOT CALL THE AIRLINE OR TRAVEL AGENCY if you run into an issue finding / ticketing this fare. LAN, ITA and Online Travel Agencies’ systems are not perfectly sync’ed in real time. Use a different date or travel agency. We use Expedia.com.mx as an example. Travelocity.com.mx is the Mexican version of Travelocity.
• Read the above!!!
• Ask us questions on Twitter (our response will be terse) or Facebook (if you want longer response)

Enjoy your trip!

Comparison between Business and Coach Fare:

Coach is more expensive than Business. LAN is funny like that  sometimes– the same thing happened when they priced the Business Class sale from the US to Santiago de Chile, rest of Chile and Buenos Aires in April.

 

Background Information:

Mexico:

• Visa: US Citizens – Not required. Other nationals, check the TIMATIC Visa Database
• Currency: Mexican Peso (MXN) $1USD = 12.78 MXN

Chile:

• Visa: US Citizens – Entry Fee on Arrival – $160. Other nationals, check the TIMATIC Visa Database
• Currency: Chilean Peso (CLP). $1USD = 502 CLP

Peru:

• Visa: US Citizens – Not required. Other nationals, check the TIMATIC Visa Database
• Currency: Peruvian Nuveo Sol (PEN) $1USD = 2.7 PEN

Tips for saving when using credit cards at international destinations:

• No Foreign Transaction Fee Credit Cards to save on international purchases
• Don’t get hit with Dynamic Currency Conversion
• Get your taxes refunded when shopping

H/T to the legendary CokeandTaco on FlyerTalk for the find.

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