Sky Airline Chile - LCC alternative to LATAM?

[Warks]

Yes the name is Sky Airline not Airlines. Am going to Patagonia next March and look at internal flights after arriving on QF27. LATAM has flights of course but they are about 50% more expensive than Sky. I don't know much about them but I've been trying to make a test booking as their prices are a lot better even with the add-ons. The problem I've been having is that you can only select a short list of countries as your 'home' on the website - Chile, Brazil, Argentina, US and "Otros" (other) with a Spanish flag. But you can select English as the language. I tried US and it gave all the prices in US dollars. When I got to the point of entering my details it had the phone number with the region number locked as 1 for US/Canada and I couldn't change it so I couldn't complete the booking. Changed to Chile and it locked the phone region to Chile.
Thought maybe I could create an account and it would recognise I'm in Australia so I could use 61. Worked through the process (which is all in Spanish and the webpage won't translate - neither Firefox nor Chrome) but I can work it out easily enough. I get to the second last page and hit Continue and nothing happens. Try in another browser, try incognito. Nothing works. Their chat suggested it was a problem with their website.
The only way I've found I can actually book the flight with them was to use Bookingdotcom. I don't like to use 3rd parties so haven't proceeded. I noted that I was buying fully flexible and refundable fares and Booking wanted to hit me with their own charges for the same privileges. Also the wanted to charge about 3x as much for seat selection as the airline.

Sky

www.skyairline.com

Just putting this out there to see if anyone has a spare moment to test this website out and see if they have any luck. No rush. Also if anyone knows anything about them. I can Google them and find all the one star reviews of course.
Thanks.
Oh am trying to book SCL to PUQ (Punta Arenas). There's some issue with Puerto Natales with very few flights going there in the next few months so we are having to fly to PA and take a bus. PN is closer to Torres del Paine where we will do the W Trek.

 

[SYD]

There’s all sorts of fun ‘n games booking Sth American Airlines. The LA Chile website will quote significantly cheaper fares than Oz but again, getting it thru to purchase is near on impossible!

We bit the bullet and just purchased direct with LA AEP-SCL-PMC and seperate tix PUQ-SCL in November (both in PE). We’re taking the ferry from PMC to PNT (also because flights were non-existent).

We also have SCL-AEP on LA but that’s on the same QF ticket (we snagged the cheap $4,999 SYD-SCL J return fare and it wasn’t much more to open jaw into BA and home from SCL).

Re SKY, they’re now appearing as options on the QF search as connections to BA (and possibly elsewhere). I can’t comment on them, but personally happy to stay with LA. We still earn a handful of points BUT they do have a reciprocal lounge arrangement for QF SG and higher.

As for alternate ways of booking SKY, you could try Trip.com. I read here (after we booked LA) that they’re ok for Sth Am. I’ve used them for other things and just recently for some CX J flights from Asia to Europe. It was actually marginally cheaper than booking direct!

 

[Scarlett]

Some others I was on tour with here in Bolivia used SKY to get around Peru and into Bolivia and seemed to think it was fine, but they’re more backpacking flyers.

They were Austrian and I don’t know the method they used to book. If you do need to end up using an OTA I second trip.com as decent to work with. When Paranair (Paraguay) cancelled my flights Trip refunded easily.

 

[SydneySwan]

As for alternate ways of booking SKY, you could try Trip.com. I read here (after we booked LA) that they’re ok for Sth Am. I’ve used them for other things and just recently for some CX J flights from Asia to Europe. It was actually marginally cheaper than booking direct!

I have used Trip.com for GOL flights in South America and also for CX and UL flights - they have always been cheaper than booking direct (that is if you can book direct - could never get GOL website to work), and you can get a bit of cashback via TCB or SB amd a few Trip coins. I have always found Trip.com support very good.

There’s all sorts of fun ‘n games booking Sth American Airlines. The LA Chile website will quote significantly cheaper fares than Oz but again, getting it thru to purchase is near on impossible!

I managed to get Latam Chile website to work on Edge. It doesn't work on Chrome at all.

 

[Warks]

Thanks for all the replies.
I managed to get around some of the bugs I was encountering (worked out the way to get the phone region number entered) and got to the final payment step. I still never managed to create an account. However now it says I do have an account but have the wrong password. When I ask to reset my password it says an email has been sent but it never arrives. Anyway...
When I get to payment the page just hangs and hangs for about 5 minutes before saying something went wrong and to start again. When I go back I see the seats I chose are still held when I look at the seating plan. Tried this a few times last night and then the prices went up - I'd blocked out the cheaper seats with my earlier failed selections and now it was offering the next tier of seats I think, it wasn't just jamming up the prices. In any case I gave up and will try again today.

However, I will try Trip beforehand. I used them for the first time for my IST-BKK flight on Turkish Airlines this month which I bought in a hurry during one of the phases of the Iran mess when prices went through the roof and they still had cheap tickets.

Once I get this phase done I have to look at some internal flights for Argentina! Wish me luck. (El Calafate to Ushuaia, Ushuaia to BA)