How to Use British Airways Miles: Post 2 Booking a LAN award JFK-LIM

by The Points Guy on April 9, 2011 · 75 comments

in British Airways,Points Guy Pointers

*Update: Application link for the most current 100K BA Visa credit card offer and promotional details.*

This is the second installment of my series on maximizing British Airways miles. Since so many of you got in on the super-lucrative 100,000 mile BA Visa sign-up bonus (see details of the most current 100K offer), it would be beneficial to check out: General tips, Post 1 – Booking BA Awards, Post 2 – Booking Partner Awards, Post 3 – Oneworld Alliance, Post 4 – Taxes and Fees, Post 5 – Household Accounts, Post 6 – Companion Ticket, Post 7 – Using ExpertFlyer for Partner Award Availability, Post 8 – The Art of the Stopover, Post 9 – Leveraging Miles and Cash Redemptions, and Post 10 - Using Qantas.com to Find Oneworld Award Availability. Also, be sure to check out my post on the credit card deal itself and the lengthy Q&A in the comments section.

As promised,  today’s post is JFK-Lima, Peru on LAN. For this example, let’s assume we want to try something new and want to fly Lan, which is arguably the best business class product to South America. The first thing I did was Google “LAN Route Map” to see where they fly to in the US, but those results didn’t turn up much. I then went to their Facebook book, where it says their US gateways are Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and San Francisco. I needed to know this, because in order to take advantage of the one Oneworld partner award chart, which is the most generous, you’d have to fly only on Lan. So flying from another city on AA to a Lan gateway is not an option because that will jack the price up to 120,000 miles for business class, since that would be a multi-Oneworld partner award. I’ll cover in other posts, but if you don’t live in or near Lan gateway cities, I’d recommend finding American Airlines routing from your city to Lima – that can be done at aa.com. Any MileSAAver awards can be booked using British Airways miles – you just have to call BA if the trip has multiple stops. Now onto our award; I want to leave in the next couple weeks to take a little spring break:

Britishairways.com -> Executive Club - Spending BA miles

JFK to Lima on my preferred dates, business/club

BA.com realizes British Airways doesn't fly that route, so it asks if I want to include partners. You can hit either of the circled buttons to pull in partner availability.

Shucks, nothing is available on my exact dates, but as with using all miles you need to be flexible. BA.com gives a +/- 7 day search in either direction of your outbound and return flights. It may take a little while, but search both ways to see what's there - write down dates and then compare what you think could be a good trip. For this example I hit previous 7 days on both and ended up with..

Not a bad compromise

80,000 miles and $65 total in taxes/ fees. If I wanted to book more stops at this point I’d write down these flight numbers and dates and then do searches for future segments, like Lima to Santiago. Once all availability is found, call BA and have them book the trip since multi-stops can’t be done online.

 

 

 

 

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  • Anonymous

    If there are saver flights on AA.com, then you can use BA miles to book those tickets. It should load, but the site is crap. I’d just write down the exact dates and flight numbers that have Saaver availability and hunker down and call British Airways to get it booked. Complain that their website is broken and if you push hard enough they’ll waive the phone booking fee. Enjoy your honeymoon!

  • Anonymous

    If you are getting in on the citi deal, why not go for 150k miles!?
    As for BRazil, you can get first class North America to Brazil for 125,000 miles or 100k for business https://www.aa.com/i18n/disclaimers/free-ticket-award-chart.jsp
    You would be able to book one way using the Sapphire-BA (they only charge 40k one way for business or 60k for first)
    Then book the other way using your AA miles.

  • Mo

    Sorry to be thick, but where do I find the AA Saver or MileSAAver (is there a difference between those two) rates?

  • Anonymous

    same thing. Go to AA.com and do award searches. There will be two levels. Saaver or AAnytime. Saaver can be booked with BA miles http://www.aa.com/reservation/awardFlightSearchAccess.do

  • Schneidler

    You can also use your BA miles to book a ticket with Alaska Air from SFO to Hawaii. They fly to 5 or 6 different destinations in HI. You could go direct from SFO or OAK or from OAK/SFO to LAX or SEA and then on to HI. I’ve had excellent luck in the past doing this exact route using BA miles to buy Alaska Air tickets. However, you will have to call them to get Alaska Air tickets. I’ve been trying to call ALL DAY today and haven’t been able to get past the “all lines are busy” message.

  • Schneidler

    And is every saaver itinerary found on aa.com always available when you call BA? I ask because it doesn’t work that way with Alaska Air, one of their other partners. I can find a flight with a dozen “saver” seats still available on alaskaair.com, but when I call BA they say no seats available. The bottom line is that Alaska Air gives BA access to only a select few of it’s saver seats on any given flight. So using the alaskaair.com site to research which flights to use is not always particularly helpful. But it sounds like it is (thankfully) different with AA?

  • SterlingGuy

    I want to do something similar LAX-Santiago-Easter Island-Lima in July or August. Were you able to use your BA miles for your trip? Did you find LAN flights and then call BA and get your ticket? What kind of LAN flights are bookable with BA miles? When I look on BA’s website for flights it finds no availability for anything.

  • Anonymous

    I did weeklong searches for JFK and MIA to LIM and then the LIM-SCL and SCL-IPC legs. All showed up on BA.com and I called and gave the flight numbers and the agent had it booked in 5 minutes. JFK-LIM-SCL-IPC-SCL-JFK for 80,000 miles in business

  • abele

    What about JFK to ICP (Easter Island) via Lima? Is it still 40K miles roundtrip in coach or smth different? There is a direct LAN flight Lima-ICP. BA site says none of the partners fly to Easter island, but it’s a lie:)

  • SterlingGuy

    Using my 100k BA miles has to be one of the most frustrating things ever. I planned out my trip in detail, going to BA’s site and verifying that each leg of my trip was avail for points on LAN (LAX-Lima-Santiago-Easter island-Lima), with stopovers, as allowed. Have called 6 times. Most of the times, after listening to their legal speech, I get the message that the call can’t be completed and then hangs up. But I have talked to a real person six times. The first two times they told me no problem, except that the Lima-LAX wasn’t released yet. The last 4 times I’ve called, they tell me that nothing is available!– even though I’m looking at BA’s website and seeing it avail to book for points! Seems like they just say no, nothing’s available so ex club members will just throw up their hands and give up. Looks like my only option is to book each segment online myself and spend 74,500 points instead of the 40k it should cost! BA has to be the worst run airline customer service on the planet.

  • SterlingGuy

    Oh, and my trip is planned for July 2012!

  • abele

    I think LAN releases awards 330 days in advance, so that might be part of the problem with bookability. Are you giving them specific flight numbers on specific dates for which you confirmed availability?

  • Anonymous

    I called British Airways Executive Club today(12 SEP2011) and was told that the LAN award using BA miles only allows one stopover in each direction from the final destination. Was the agent correct? Your site indicates multiple stopovers are allowed.

  • Anonymous

    The agent was wrong unless they recently changed the rules. I booked a multistop trip recently, as have many. I’d recommend calling again

  • Pingback: 1,000 Free Lan Kilometers for Account Sign-up | The Points Guy

  • JaxKris

    @thepointsguy – I discovered this blog a week ago and have been reading since. Is it too late to get the household account before the Avios change. My wife and I got in on the BA-visa sign up offer and have 200 K miles and were planning to book a Europe trip in the Fall of 2012. With the new changes coming we are thinking of booking it right now and make minor changes later if necessary

  • Anonymous

    You can create a household account right now and it will be active right away.

  • JaxKris

    @thepointsguy – Thanks, tried it out and it is active and ready to go. I’ve been using your 10 part series to understand BA’s sytem. We are trying to make the following trip happen SFO->LHR(stop)->FCO(Rome, stop)->BCN(stop)->CDG(stop)->LHR->SFO.

    It already looks like an impossible trip to make using reward travel and to make full use of the points I am trying to see if I can atleast get business class for the long haul flights to and from SFO. I used Kayak to chart out the flights and itinerary and plan to call them tomorrow to make this happen. Wanted to get your input to see if there is a better way to break that trip like using one way from SFO to FCO and then another one way back to SFO. Wanted to understand a little about point 8 from the general tips of your 10 part series.

  • Anonymous

    Generally you are only allowed en route stopover (London) or if you only flew FinnAir (Helsinki). I doubt they will let you backtrack between london, but let us know how it goes!

  • Joe B

    Is there any way to find FTE or USH tickets via BA online search engine? They seem to be excluded from the search, so very hard to work out availability in advance of calling the agents (who are crazy busy right now…)

  • Kevin

    How far in advance should I start looking for business availability on the JFK-SCL-JFK flights?

  • Adavydov7

    Quick question, is the one OneWorld Partner award chart still valid. I ask this because the link you provide to it is no longer working. I am curious because I am about to book a NA->SA->NA trip with multiple stopovers and want to be sure that it is still just 40K for the roundtrip. Thanks in advance!

  • mimi

    Hi Points Guy…you seem to know a lot about this stuff…I’d like to book a trip on BA points, but I’m not sure if the passport will be ready in time. If it isn’t, can I change the booking relatively painlessly, or will I lose the points?

  • thepointsguy

    High BA fees on all flights to Europe except aer lingus

  • thepointsguy

    $90 to get miles back or to change dates – per ticket

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