AAdvantage Redemption Aus to Guam or Easter Island

[Longrass]

So the AA chart shows Guam and Easter Island as South Pacific, meaning same price as flying to brissy or Sydney in J. There are no F options, even though JAL to Japan and Guam offer F.

Any anecdotal experience about booking these destinations?

AA desk said that zero redemptions available to Easter Island, for any date, in the bookable range....

 

[ric_melb]

I would think the problem with using AA points to get to Guam or Easter Island is that there are no direct fights from Australia to either place.
So for example you'd have to fly Darwin/Sydney/Tokyo/Guam or Darwin/Sydney/Santiago/Easter Island.
I cant see AA letting you do such a such routing for the price of one flight domestically in Australia.
Even if you paid for the Darwin/Sydney sector separately I still think its a no go situation.
Others may have different views.

 

[opusman]

I wasn't able to find any award flights SCL-IPC through QF a couple of years ago, even in Y. I don't think LAN release them at all (or maybe they don't release them to partners).

 

[flightobserver]

At least for Easter Island, it is possible to reach that destination staying wholly within the South Pacific using Aadvantage partners. The routing would look something like:

SYD/MEL/BNE - AKL (QF)
AKL-PPT (TN)
PPT-IPC (LA)

However, since the PPT-IPC leg only runs once weekly, the only possible days of departure from Australia is Tuesday or Monday (with an extended transit in AKL). Award availability is probably another issue.

 

[Oubline]

AA will absolutely let you book to Easter Island as a South Pacific award (15/30k). Because you can't transfer via a third region (in this case the logical option would be to go via SCL but not allowed), you're confined to the OZ-AKL-PPT-IPC routing. AKL-PPT is on Air Tahiti Nui and PPT-IPC is on LATAM. As flightobserver points out, PPT-IPC only operates once a week early on a Tuesday so you'd need to leave Australia on Monday and probably overnight in Auckland. As a side note, the time zone changes are interesting with this routing - you'd arrive Auckland on a Monday night, leave Auckland on Tuesday morning, arrive Tahiti on Monday and then leave to Easter Island on Tuesday!

The reverse routing to get back from Easter Island isn't possible on one award because there's more than a 24 hour layover between the weekly flight IPC-PPT and the next flight on TN from PPT-AKL.

I think the award tp Easter Island represents outstanding value, and have regularly been checking availability for ages - it'd be an excellent alternate way to get to South America (buying a separate IPC-SCL flight). However the catch is availability on the PPT-IPC leg - I've almost never seen availability. LATAM is weird though - every now and then there will be wide open availability for travel on the route during a certain month , few weeks etc. And then it will disappear.

In 2015 i was actually successful in putting an itinerary (three x 15k awards =45k) MEL-AKL-PPT-IPC, IPC-PPT (stop) PPT-AKL-MEL on hold, but chickened out because:

- the PPT-IPC flight is only weekly and a week is probably too long on Easter Island.
- that much flying and time zone changes would be fairly brutal, especially in Y.
- there's only a connection in PPT of a few hours on the way to IPC, I was worried the flight in from AKL would be late and I'd then miss the connection and be stuck in PPT for a week until the next flight, or have to just give up and go home.

i haven't looked into Guam but believe it's impossible to visit there on Oneworld without transiting a third region (Japan / Asia 1), and therefore can't be done as a South Pacific award

 

[bsb]

A week on Easter Island would be a veeeeeeeeeeeery long time to have to hang there. And LAN hardly ever release awards seats.

 

[kpc]

We spent 36 hours on Easter Island in 2012 and saw / did everything!

 

[opusman]

We had 5 nights there and enjoyed it - nice not to have to rush around, and you get to revisit a few sites at different times of day etc.