> Going to Valdivia, Chile, in the fall. I haven’t been able to book sooner because I’ve been waiting on good dates to visit my college student who will be studying there. I would welcome any recommendations regarding flights (coming from Austin; I have about 500k UR points and a bunch of AA points) as well as other things to do while in Chile.

BA and Virgin can get LATAM flights in economy and business. Economy from LA to Chile is around 40k? and business is 95k. Alaska is the best deal for LAX-SCL business at 50k.

LATAM flights within Chile can be cheap or a bit expensive, $50 to $150 per person, for the economy ticket that includes carryon. (I think that’s called Economy Lite? On the other hand, their basic economy doesn’t include carryon) Those costs can add up..

Virgin points can’t get you from the US to the regional airports (or maybe it’s just a website limitation thing, I haven’t tried calling) nor does BA. But Iberia and Alaska can get you to regionals. Because of surcharges, booking regionals with points won’t be worth it EXCEPT if you are booking US-Santiago-Valdivia as one ticket. Then you get the benefit of a single ticket (so if you miss the connection, LATAM will put you on the next flight) plus saving a little bit of money on the regional connection flight.

Adding the regional connector may increase the price a little bit or not at all. For example, LAX-SCL-Puerto Montt in business on Alaska is 50k regardless of the last leg, as it’s just 50k flat for anywhere in South America. Using Alaska for econ would be a poor use of Alaska points (it needs 30k points)

BA seems to allow SCL-Region flights (for 6k+$20), but not US-SCL-region flights.
If you book on Iberia, there are no cancellations, changes or refunds if the metal is not BA/IB and your travel plans change. So if you book a LATAM flight on Iberia, and you can’t fly on that day, you will lose both the fees and the points.

To transfer Avios between Iberia and British, both accounts need to be 90+ days old.
Once you book your flight on BA, you’ll want to connect it to your LATAM online account to manage any changes and assign seating. When linking, if BA gives you a PNR that is all letters, then you can enter it directly to LATAM. But if BA includes some numbers in the PNR, LATAM won’t accept it as a valid PNR. (This is due to LATAM using a different PNR convention (older one?) than BA). The workaround is to go to LATAM website and “check in” to your flight. Only in the check in, does the BA alphanumberic PNR work. Of course you won’t be able to check in since it’s too early. But in the error page, LATAM will also show you your “Ticket Registration Code”. Copy that, and paste into “Add my trip”. And voila, you can add the trip to your LATAM account. For some strange reason, LATAM shows my economy ticket category as “seat selection not included” but it still lets me select my seats for free.