South America

[kmcgreg]

Any ideas on how to get to South America on points - I have a stack of them and want to go from melbourne to Equador, Peru and Chile.
Singapore's website is a pain in the butt to find anything sensible on. My entry point is flexible - Santiago, or Quito, or even Buenos Aires.
I want to start at the bottom of south america - patagonia in Chile and work my way up to Equador and then home.

About to give up and look LAN instead. Pity as I have a heap of points to use up before the end of 2013.

It looks like either plan a different trip or fly with a different airline.

Any ideas?

 

[Fantic125]

If you have lots of miles have you considered going in through the US and flying down?

I'm not sure what the options would be for *A, but for OW an example is SYD-LAX-DFW-MIA-EZE.

 

[deadfish]

There's also SAA via JNB, but would require a separate paid ticket to PER first.

e.g. PER-JNB-GRU/EZE

 

[kmcgreg]

would round the world or round the pacific be possible?

 

[limlib]

Go to the Star Alliance website and check out their route map, it will show you all the Star Alliance flights in and out of your preferred cities. You can work out your preferred route. On the SQ website find the Krisflyer Partner Awards charts and it will show you how many points you need for a Star Alliance Award which can a combination of Airlines and you do get a free stopover anywhere enroute if it is a return flight plus you can use more points to buy extra stopovers I think. To book the award you have to contact Krisflyer to do the booking but there is no points charge to do so and I have always found them helpful. You could just ring them and give them dates and they could come up with some suggestions. I wouldn't waste your points!

At a quick glance other routes you may consider could be Air Canada from Sydney through to Toronto then directly down to Santiago. Or SQ actually fly to Sao Paulo(if you booked online for that you get the additional 15% point discount) or SQ fly via Moscow to Houston then a United flight down to South America. Hope you find something.

 

[albatross710]

Or SQ actually fly to Sao Paulo(if you booked online for that you get the additional 15% point discount) or SQ fly via Moscow to Houston then a United flight down to South America. Hope you find something.

I would like to do a similar trip.

Speaking with one of an SQ FA over the weekend in 24 years of being with SQ she had not been to Sao Paulo. Not all flight crew are vaccinated for Yellow Fever. It makes sense that SQ wouldn't maintain all vaccinations for all crew if not required.

I hope the OP enjoy the travels - sounds exciting.

 

[CMak]

Any further update on these flights - I am looking at doing the Grand South American tour next year as well.
CMak

 

[kmcgreg]

I am still no further ahead trying sort out flights. Want to fly Melb to Quito equator to see the country and galapogos then some internal flights to Peru ...ground to Bolivia ..fly la Paz to Santiago then down to Patagonia and onto brazil to return home via rio.
i would be happy even sorting out one way award flights to Quito or return from rio. At this rate I might have to give up and find a different trip as I need to use up my points before they start expiring.

 

[CMak]

Just booked flights on AmEx Reward/Krisflyer
BNE-SIN-GRU (Sao Paolo) via Barcelona - 26+hrs but at least in J
Tried Virgin - they couldn't see the Australia to US to Rio etc option so I gave up and then tried Perth to JNB to South America (Krisflyer partner - SAA) but, once again a bit too difficult for the person at the end of the phone.
CMak

 

[dajop]

Go to the Star Alliance website and check out their route map, it will show you all the Star Alliance flights in and out of your preferred cities. You can work out your preferred route.

This is the first step.

The second step is to use one or several star alliance programs where you can search for online availability of star alliance awards seats. This is not foolproof but is a good way of narrowing down choices for when calling up Krisflyer. The two options I use are United (no membership required - you can look from home page, although this tends to favour UA flights when travelling through the US, and sometimes SQ blocks awards for united members), and ANA (you need to join ANA's program first. And then when doing searches you first need to look for an ANA redemption - just pick a random route like Tokyo to San Francisco - and after doing that you click "Search Star Alliance" members and you pick your desired route to search for).

The third step is to call Krisflyer and check for availability, armed with the information you gather from Steps 1) and 2). Of course if looking at SQ flights (eg to GRU via SIN) all you have to do is look online, and is cheaper to do so, unless making it part of a multi-sector, multi-airline itinerary.