How to book Machu Picchu and Easter Island in business class

Introduction

Both Machu Pichu and Easter Island have been on my bucket list for a while now.  It seems one of the best times go to MP is around April to avoid the crowds.  If you do go, I got 2 very strong recommendations for using http://www.llamapath.com/ for their 4 day Inca Hike.  I had actually spent half a day last week figuring out flights for the trip, which I’ll talk about below, but then my wife nixed the entire trip due to the Zika virus.  Sure, while MP is 8K feet high, theoretically, there shouldn’t be any mosquitoes, the problem is that Peru is in CDC’s “red zone,” and if you have a wife, you’ll know there are battles you pick and choose from, and I didn’t want to battle this.  Plus, it’s not like MP is gonna sink into the ocean like Venice or the Maldives; I’m sure it’ll be there years down the road, so this trip will still happen at a later time.

 

Best way to get to Machu Pichu in business or first class

First off, Milevalue has a great post on this topic already, so this is sort of my experience booking this itinerary.

 

American Airlines – 30K miles in business one-way; NO AVAILABILITY on AA metal

When booking award flights, you want to look at availability on the longest segment first.  For me in Seattle, I could fly down to LAX, DFW, or MIA and then take that direct flight to LIM.  I’m not going to screen cap this for you, but just know there was ZERO SAVER AVAILABILITY for 2 people in BUSINESS in April 2017 (A FULL 10 MONTHS AWAY.)  This was looking at all 3 routes too.  Mother Plucker!  Gawd I hate all these American airlines and their terrible award inventory levels!  So I had to rule out AA metal.

 

United Airlines – 35K miles in business one-way; NO AVAILABILITY

United flies a non-stop from IAH-LIM but of course there was NO SAVER AVAILABILITY either.

 

Delta Airlines – 75K miles on Delta One one-way; DIDN’T EVEN BOTHER

Delta flies to LIM out of ATL and has dynamic award pricing, and so I didn’t even bother looking when I was planning this.  Maybe if I lived in ATL, I would have looked, but knowing I’d have to go SEA-ATL, the stars and moon would have to align for me to make this work.  However, for this post, I did look and saw 2 seats avail on ATL-LIM on 3 dates in April.

However, once I entered in SEA-LIM, the Delta search engine choked on me:

 

Lan airlines to the rescue

After being frustrated with the American airlines lack of award space 10 months out, I decided to look at LAN Airlines, who is partnered with both AA and Alaska.  You can’t search LAN space on AA, but you can on the BA site.  So I searched and saw this:

WHOA!  Seven seats in business class available!  Also note that it’s operated on a Boeing 787 too.  ALL FOR 30K AA MILES ONE-WAY!  Can you ask for anything better?  Next I looked at LIM-CUZ (this is a coach only flight):

The last step was looking at SEA-LAX.  This is great on AA because they partner with AS, so I could fly on AS metal.  Here’s the thing though – I actually can’t book those 20K seats on a coach award.  Which means if I wanted to book this entire itinerary as a saver coach award, it would be IMPOSSIBLE due to the lack of coach space from SEA-LAX (it has to be 12.5K miles as a “saver award” on AS.)  I’d probably just pay cash for the SEA-LAX portion and book LAX-LIM-CUZ as my AA award.  However, since my award is a BUSINESS SAVER AWARD, I can pick any of these flights in First class.  I actually picked a later flight that is at the bottom of the list.

 

Booking the award

I called up AA and got an agent who was able to book all of my segments from SEA-LAX-LIM-CUZ for a total of 60K miles (2 people) + $62 in taxes/fees.  I asked her if I could put it on a 5 day hold, and she said YES, that since this was a partner award, I could hold the flight.  I wasn’t 100% ready yet; luckily I chose to put the award on hold instead of ticketing it since if I had ticketed it, I would have had to pay cancellation fees (no free cancels w/in 24 hrs with AA.)

 

Lima to Santiago

After a week or so in Cuzco and Lima, I now needed to book my flights to Santiago to get to Easter Island.  LIM to SCL is about a 3.5 hour flight.  I used the BA search engine once again.  I was fine with a 3.5 hour flight in coach and it would have cost 20K (for 2) + $61 in fees.  Also note that flight LA0601 is served on the Dreamliner; the LA2639 is an A319 jet.  I didn’t book this flight using BA.

Santiago to Easter Island

Everything I had read about Easter Island makes it seem 2-3 days there is plenty.  I first looked at using LAN miles for this flight, but the value just wasn’t there due to the cash price being so cheap.  By the way, this is also served by a Dreamliner.  I would have paid cash for this flight.

Booking The return

Since I’m returning from Santiago, Chile, the AA award is now a “South America 2” award, which makes it a 57.5K OW award.  Let me tell you that I’m basically doing the same route back as I would coming down.  Availability on LAN from SCL-LAX was the same – 7 seats in J on the Dreamliner.  However, I had 3 options for the return:

1. Pay the 57.5K AA in business
2. Pay 10K Avios to fly coach to Lima, then pay 30K AA in business back to Seattle
3. Pay 45K Alaska miles in business

I mulled it over and was going to pick option #2, but decided to do #3 just because for an extra 5K miles (yes I am aware AS miles are probably more valuable than AA/BA,) I was able to book LIM-SCL(stop)-LAX-SEA all in business.  This is actually a much better option than #2 since I get a “free” LIM-SCL flight whereas #2 would entail 10K BA LIM-SCL (coach) + 10K BA SCL-LIM (coach) + 30K AA (biz.)  I called up AS and actually ticketed the flight just fine.

Conclusion

Later that night, my wife nixed the whole itinerary.  I was able to call up AS and cancel for a full refund since I was within 24 hours.  I then spent another half day looking at a Japan and Korea itinerary instead, which will be in a later post.  I’ll have to come back to this post down the road once the wife is okay with the trip.

 

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