As I’ve said before, I can’t get myself to take pictures on an economy flight of my knees pressed up against the seat in front of me, the thimbles of cheap red wine served, or “the chicken dish” but I do like to compare the experience against other airlines. This trip provided a crash course of the LAN experience flying a total of 30 hours over 11 days with five flights exceeding 4 hours. See Current Airline Credit Cards.

Trip Report

1. Trip Motivation and Planning
2. LAN Flight Experience
3. Tambo Del Inka Resort
4. Machu Picchu and the Sacred Valley
5. JW Marriott Lima
6. Exploring Lima
7. Exploring Easter Island and the Moai
8. W Santiago
9. Exploring Santiago De Chile

I definitely enjoyed each of my flights on LAN. We primarily flew on LAN’s largest aircraft, the 767-300. It may just be my enjoyment of large aircrafts, but even on short or domestic flights, I feel like I receive better service from crews that service the wide bodies. Of the most recent airlines I have experienced overseas, I would rank LAN above my United and American economy experiences but well below Japan Airlines, Cathay Pacific, and South African Airways.

The bird

No jet bridges on Easter Island

LAN taking off from the most remote airport on earth

What I liked about LAN

• Economy seats were comfortable. I had no issues with legroom or obtrusive under-seat equipment.
• Cabin was open and comfortable with the 2-3-2 configuration. One red-eye flight to Easter Island was fairly empty so I was able to get a decent nights sleep laying flat across the three seats in the middle. That was a lifesaver.
• Consistent, professional service. Flight attendants were anticipating your needs but were attentive of requests.
• Good selection of Hollywood movies and several seasons of TV shows. I watched a full season of Modern Family.

What I didn’t like about LAN

• Extremely stingy with Wine. We were given thimbles to drink from and refills were only offered sparingly.
• The Entertainment system was not intuitive. I consider myself tech savvy but I found it extremely annoying to watch anything but long movies. Every 30 minutes when a show ended, you would need to navigate back through 30 slow-loading menus to find your next episode in the season. After a few failed attempts my mother gave up and had me queue up each of her TV shows.

Confusingly enough, several of LAN’s flights outs of Miami have an American Airlines flight leaving at approximately the same time headed for the same destination. Anecdotally, a few people I talked on the plane who travel the MIA-LIM route often expressed their strong preference of LAN on this route over AA.

I think LAN is a great airline for travel to and throughout South America and I would not hesitate to fly them again. I actually enjoyed some of the flight times (red-eyes) down to Lima from Miami. I am already thinking about a long weekend trip down to Peru on LAN using the generous Avios pricing on this route.See Current Airline Credit Cards.