South America Air Fare Help Needed

[wyealbert]

I'm looking for help in finding a reasonable air fare flying from Baltimore to Buenos Aires and returning from Valparaiso (Santiago), Chile. Anyone have suggestions? Thanks!

[Keith1010]

Have you first searched on some of the search engines such as http://www.bestfares.com

 

You might want to start with this or another search engine to get a feel for prices.

 

Keith

[SelectSys]

Here a few ideas:

 

1) Consider flying mid week even if this doesn't match your schedule exactly as both the Buenos Aires region and Santiago/Valparaiso/Vina Del Mar areas are worth seeing in more detail than is possible with a normal cruise stop.

 

2) Consider being flexible in terms of your originating and returning airport including IAD and DCA. Changing airports might just save you a bunch of money even though it might be further from home.

 

3) Consider flying on a Latin American carrier such as LAN in addition to the traditional US carriers.

 

I plugged in some random dates in January and came up with a round trip airfare on Kayak and came up with some one stop fares of $818.00.

[Hamburg Avon Lady]

:) Have you checked what the cruise line can offer ??? We saved a lot of $$$

this past January by booking our one-way air through the cruise line. We

sailed out of Pt. Canaveral but flew home from Santiago. As the other

poster suggests --- please try to add some additional days to BA and Valpariso/Santiago. Very interesting countries and lovely cities. It's a great trip !! :cool:

[FlyerTalker]

:) Have you checked what the cruise line can offer ??? We saved a lot of $$$ this past January by booking our one-way air through the cruise line.

For a one-way, that's quite possibly the case. But this is a standard open-jaw routing (BWI-EZE and SCL-BWI). The two USA carriers that serve both EZE and SCL are American and Delta. However, you should look into various other options, including LAN, Copa, TACA and TAM for routings with connections in South America, and AeroMexico for a Mexico City connect. If you really want to think outside the box, look at heading north to Toronto and connecting to Air Canada.

 

Finally, you should get a clear picture of what "reasonable" is for this route. South American flights are not cheap, and there is a fairly limited amount of "lift", leading to higher fares. Also, this isn't a short hop....BWI to EZE is a straight-line distance of over 5200 miles, longer than BWI-Athens.

 

Be flexible in your travel dates, and try not to travel on the day immediately before/after or the day of cruise - heavier demand for everyone getting on/off the ship, so you'll have better luck moving off of those dates.

[wyealbert]

Thanksk for all the helpful replies. It looks like Copa Airlines has the best fares at this point.

[smeyer418]

there was recently a sale on TAM and Mexico airlines. I am going JFK to EZE in February 2010 with a return from Chile in March to JFK. I bought this six weeks ago and it was $608 a person rt with all taxes on TAM....

[brazilgirl]

I am a TAM frequent flyer member and they just sent me an ad for a huge 25% off sale for US/South America fares. They fly to Santiago and BA-nice airline.

 

I´ve flown on Copa too and it was fine , but TAM is better IMHO.