After confirming our award tickets to South America 🔗, I started looking at what else we could do. My brother-in-law had been collecting miles on the Alaska Mileage Plan as well. These miles do not expire as long as the account remains active. If there is no activity for 24 months, the account is locked; however, the miles can still be retrieved for up to one year after that. Not knowing how many more miles he would collect or when, it made sense to use them at the right time.
As I looked at options, I found something that would fit perfectly into our trip to South America: a side trip to Easter Island 🔗. Easter Island is on almost everyone’s bucket list! Let me rephrase that: almost everyone who has heard of Easter Island has it on their bucket list! This was going to be a fantastic way to strike that off.
Flying from Santiago to Easter Island was going to cost 17,500 miles one-way for each of us. I first booked us round-trip tickets from Santiago to Easter Island. But as I continued with research and award searches, I found out that the number of miles required to fly from Buenos Aires to Easter Island via Santiago was the same. So, I called the Alaska Mileage Plan service number and an agent was able to add the Buenos Aires leg—scheduled for the previous day with an overnight in Santiago—connecting to our existing flight out of Santiago to Easter Island. I kept the return to Santiago as is.
| Date | Flight | From | At | To | At | Airline |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MON 06 OCT | LA 456 | BUENOS AIRES, AR (AEP) | 20:00 | SANTIAGO, CL (SCL) | 22:22 | LATAM |
| TUE 07 OCT | LA 841 | SANTIAGO, CL (SCL) | 09:25 | EASTER ISLAND, CL (IPC) | 12:50 | LATAM |
| THU 09 OCT | LA 842 | EASTER ISLAND, CL (IPC) | 14:40 | SANTIAGO, CL (SCL) | 21:10 | LATAM |
With that, we were all set for our trip to Easter Island, thanks to the Alaska Mileage Plan and, more importantly, my brother-in-law.
70000 miles | 1 airline