OneWorld "Visit South America" Airpass - how structured?

[RooFlyer]

I'm looking at the OneWorld Visit South America Airpass and having the devil of a time understanding how its structured & priced. Calls to Qantas and LAN this morning have left me not much the wiser.

Here is the critical aspect from the OW web site:

View attachment 35239

On the face of it, a "Zone" means a sector. That is, a sector 700 miles long, would be in Zone 2, and be priced at $xx_. But if "zone" = "sector", I can't make this sentence make sense:

Journeys can be within a single zone or a combination of two or more.

Has anyone actually booked one of these things, and can explain what a zone is, please? Maybe its several consecutive sectors, adding up to be within the range of miles?

As I mentioned, I called Qantas and after being put on hold for a while, the lady sort of agreed that a zone was a sector, but kept relying on her notes which said "its priced per sector", and couldn't explain how a journey could be within a single sector (assuming that one would be flying more than one sector!!).

As for LAN - Basil Fawlty wasn't in it. Turns out their "South American Airpass" is different from OneWorld's "South American Airpass" and no, it doesn't appear on the lan.com web site!

Help, please!

 

[RooFlyer]

Here are the prices Qantas gave me this morning (all in USD)

Zone 1 $153
Zone 2 $168
Zone 3 $251
Zone 4 $285
Zone 5 $390
Zone 6 $480

 

[cmon0005]

To be honest I've never worked out how these Visit 'X' passes actually work nor how to book them, and whether they work out any better price than just booking through the airlines website directly as a multi-city booking?

 

[RooFlyer]

To be honest I've never worked out how these Visit 'X' passes actually work nor how to book them, and whether they work out any better price than just booking through the airlines website directly as a multi-city booking?

Fair comment, and in this case I will be looking at LAN's own product, as every flight on the OW 'South American Airpass' will be on LAN! (Now, if only they would make some sense ...)

I did a 'Visit Europe' Airpass on Star Alliance last year (first one in my memory ), and did price it separately, and the Airpass was significantly cheaper (about 2/3 the cost), hence my looking at similar thing this time. It makes sense for them to price these things attractively - else one would simply book it sector by sector with any airline, any alliance.

 

[cmon0005]

Fair comment, and in this case I will be looking at LAN's own product, as every flight on the OW 'South American Airpass' will be on LAN! (Now, if only they would make some sense ...)

I did a 'Visit Europe' Airpass on Star Alliance last year (first one in my memory ), and did price it separately, and the Airpass was significantly cheaper (about 2/3 the cost), hence my looking at similar thing this time. It makes sense for them to price these things attractively - else one would simply book it sector by sector with any airline, any alliance.

Thanks that makes it a bit clearer. Most importantly what fare class does Visit X flights book into usually?

Also after reading the T+C's on the OW site, it looks like its for Economy travel only?

 

[jfabian]

The main difference from what I can find is that on the LAN one you get the international baggage allowance but have to fix the dates on booking. The oneworld one i cant figure out the baggage allowance, however you can leave all but the first sector as an open ended booking.

I am looking at doing one of these also through QF, but it would be handy to have the same baggage all the way? On the one world site it says that the charges MAY not include all fees and taxes as they have to be collected separately.

Also, on the phone they told me the card payment fee was un-avoidable as was the telephone booking fee. For the 7 sectors I am thinking of booking, I would save about $300 on the OW than the LAN.

 

[RooFlyer]

Bit of an update for anyone interested, and a small rant.

First the OneWorld Sth American Airpass. The 'Zone's refer to sectors. A sector's mileage falls in the range of one of the zones and that's the fare you'll pay for that sector. The sentence I was puzzling over:

Journeys can be within a single zone or a combination of two or more.

... apparently just means that your journey can comprise one or more sectors!! Wow.

I had a stiff gin in hand and called LAN again, seeking details on their own airpass. This frankly is a joke. You call the Australian 1800 number and the call, I'm sure, goes to Sth America somewhere. Terrible quality, but I explain that I am just after the basic rules, T&Cs of their airpass, such as min and max segments, whether open jaws are allowed; if open jaw milages are counted, the basic pricing structure (total distance, total distance ranges, sector distances etc.

No, he can't tell me any of that until I give him an itinerary. I explain that I need the rules to plan the itinerary, but then gave up and simply made one up (imagined dates and the cities I want to visit). I had to repeat everything at least twice due to the call quality.

THEN he immediately says he has to transfer me to a colleague who can tell me the rules. :evil:

**$$!@%$. Call quality worse again. I can barely make the guy out. I want to give up but he's trying. Says the same thing - he needs an itinerary before he can help me. Didn't the previous guy pass on the details that I gave him?

No, sir. :evil: :evil: :evil:

Tempted to hang up, I went through it all again. He generated a price. Meaningless. Then and only then would he answer questions about the rules, but the line became simply unusable so I said thanks and goodbye.

My travel agent is really gunna earn the commission on this one!

Edit: Google is my friend. The US LAN site is quite different from the Australian one!!! http://www.lan.com/en_us/promociones/data/norteamerica/us/todo_el_mundo/saairpass_preg.html

 

[Reneer]

Hi RooFlyer, how did you end up going with travel agent? I need to contact Qantas to sort out too but thinking travel agent may be more ideal (and less frustrating!). Any info appreciated. Cheers

 

[RooFlyer]

My TA ended up pricing and booking the route on individual sectors - that is, a regular multi city type booking on LAN. Was a little bit more expensive than the OneWorld AirPass, but it has SCL-UIO (5+ hours) in premium economy, whereas the AirPass has to be all Y. So better value this time but I think there's a chance that either could come out cheaper if its all the same class and you get or miss out on the best fares on certain legs.

At the time of booking (a month or more now) LAN were restructuring their AirPass so not even the travel agent could get any sense out of the local rep, so we gave up on that one.

My advice would be to price the itinerary using the OneWorld AirPass pricing-by-sector and then get a TA to price it via regular ticketing.

 

[casanovawa]

I used a LAN south American airpass back in 2011 for several flights around South America...

priced the flights individually on some online booking site then went into their tool and put in the segments I wanted and it came out cheaper so I booked it... Wasn't worried about status or booking classes or any of that guff, and thought it was just based on the length of the flight (maybe even if it had multiple segments which one of them did)

That was enough for me and so i booked it...