LATAM Airlines LATAM Pass Award Booking Instructions

If you’ve taken flights around Central or South America, there’s a good chance you’ve flown with LATAM Airlines. LATAM is the largest operator in South America by most metrics and has its main hubs in Santiago (Chile), São Paolo (Brazil) and Lima (Peru). Through its many national subsidiaries, LATAM Airlines operates around 1,400 flights per day and transports over 74 million passengers annually.

In addition to its many flights, LATAM also operates its own frequent flyer program, known as LATAM Pass. Through this program, you can earn miles in a variety of different ways and then redeem those miles for award flights with LATAM Airlines and its partner airlines. Unfortunately, earning LATAM miles is not very easy for U.S.-based travelers because this program doesn’t offer any co-branded credit cards to U.S. consumers, nor does it allow transfers from any of the major U.S. credit card rewards programs (such as American Express Membership Rewards or Capital One Rewards).

Nonetheless, if you often fly between the U.S. and Latin America or take flights between Latin American countries, you can definitely accumulate some LATAM miles. In this article, we’re going to explain the process of redeeming LATAM miles for award flights as well as how to join this frequent flyer program and quickly accumulate miles.

Joining LATAM Pass

Before you can earn or redeem miles with the LATAM Pass program, you’ll need to enroll and become a member. To enroll and create an account, visit the LATAM Airlines website and click the “Log in” button in the top right corner of the homepage. Then, click the “Create Account” hyperlink on the drop-down menu.

You’ll then be redirected to a new page where you’ll have to enter some personal information including your country of residence, passport number, name, date of birth, gender, cell phone number and email address. You’ll then need to create a password for your LATAM Pass account and accept the terms and conditions by clicking the checkbox.

Finally, click the “Create account” button at the bottom of this page. Once you do so, you’ll have created an account and will receive a unique membership number. You should also receive a welcome email containing this number. We recommend writing down your membership number somewhere you won’t lose it as you’ll need it to log in to your account and to earn LATAM miles in the future.

How to Earn LATAM Pass Miles

As a member of the LATAM Pass program, you’re eligible to start accumulating LATAM miles. There are many ways to earn miles through this program. However, some are far more effective than others. In the following sections, we’ll quickly examine a few of the most effective ways to earn miles through the LATAM Pass program.

It’s worth noting that the LATAM Pass program uses a dynamic pricing model to price all award flights. Through this program, each mile is worth about 1 cent. So, if you wish to know the number of points you’ll need to save up for a certain award flight, just look at the cash price for that flight. For example, If you wish to book an award flight that has a cash price of $400, you’ll most likely need to save up around 40,000 points to book that flight.

Flying with LATAM Airlines

Of course, you can earn LATAM miles by taking paid flights on LATAM Airlines. And, since the LATAM Pass program doesn’t allow U.S. consumers to earn miles through credit card spending (either by making points transfers or with co-branded cards), the most effective way to earn LATAM miles is by flying.

When taking flights on LATAM Airlines, the number of miles you’ll earn depends on the cost of your airfare (excluding taxes, fees and additional services), whether you’re flying domestically, regionally or internationally and your membership status with the LATAM Pass program.

To calculate your mileage earnings, you’ll need to multiply the cost of your airfare by the multiplier associated with your membership tier. The following table includes how many miles you’ll earn per dollar spent on airfare:

For instance, if you were to take an international LATAM Airlines-operated flight that cost $400 and your status in the LATAM Pass program was Basic, you’d earn 2,000 LATAM miles ($400 x 5 = 2,000 LATAM miles). However, if you took the same flight and you had Platinum status, you’d earn 3,600 LATAM miles.

Flying with Partner Airlines

In addition to paid flights on LATAM Airlines, you can earn LATAM miles by taking paid flights on partner airlines. Although LATAM Airlines isn’t a member of any airline alliance, it still has a fairly impressive list of airline partners:

• Aeromexico
• Alaska Airlines
• Austrian Airlines
• British Airways
• Cathay Pacific
• Delta Airlines
• Finnair
• Iberia
• Japan Airlines
• Lufthansa
• Malaysia Airlines
• Qantas
• Qatar Airways
• Royal Jordanian
• Swiss International Air Lines
• Virgin Atlantic

If you wish to earn LATAM miles on paid flights with any of the aforementioned airlines, choose LATAM Pass as your preferred frequent flyer program and enter your membership number, either when booking your flight or when checking in for your flight. The amount of time it takes for miles to land in your LATAM Pass account balance depends on the airline that you’re flying with.

Unlike paid flights on LATAM Airlines, partner flights accumulate miles based on the actual distance of the flights and your fare class. To calculate the number of miles you’ll earn on a partner flight, visit the Associated Airlines page of the LATAM Pass website and click on that partner. Then, multiply the distance of your flight in miles by the percentage associated with your fare class. For example, here’s the earning table for Delta Air Lines-operated flights:

So, if you were to take a 900-mile Delta Air Lines-operated flight in premium economy class (fare class P), you would earn 1,350 LATAM miles (900 miles flown x 150% = 1,350 LATAM miles).

Booking Hotel Stays

Another fairly effective way to earn LATAM miles is by booking hotel stays with certain hotel booking engines, including Booking.com, Kaligo.com and Rocketmiles.

When booking stays through the Booking.com-LATAM Pass partnership website, you can earn 5X miles per dollar spent., Plus, Booking.com offers stays at much more than just hotels, such as hostels, homestays, casinos and unique stays in bungalows, treehouses and more.

You can also earn 12X points per dollar spent when booking stays through Kaligo.com-LATAM Pass partnership website, which is an excellent earning rate. By booking a stay that costs just $100, you could earn 1,200 LATAM miles. And, if you’re willing to book many of your hotel stays through Kaligo.com, you could quickly rack up enough LATAM miles for an award flight.

Other Ways to Earn

There are many other ways to earn miles through the LATAM Pass program. Unfortunately, none of these other earning methods are as effective as earning miles on flights or booking hotel stays. Nonetheless, if you happen to use the LATAM Pass program as your primary frequent flyer program, it’s worth familiarizing yourself with these other earning methods. They could help you earn some extra miles here and there.

You can earn miles with the LATAM Pass program by booking stays with certain hotel chains, transferring points from hotel rewards programs, renting cars and more. To learn more about these other earning methods, visit the Earn miles page on the LATAM Pass website.

How to Book Award Flights Through LATAM Airlines LATAM Pass

Once you’ve saved up enough LATAM miles to purchase your desired award flight, you can start the process of booking your flight by visiting the LATAM Airlines website and logging into your account. To log in, click the “Log in” button in the top-right corner of the homepage and enter your account credentials.

Return to the LATAM Airlines website homepage, where you’ll see the flight booking tool box. In order to search for award flights instead of cash flights, you’ll need to check the box labeled “Use your miles + cash.” Once you’ve checked that box, the process of booking an award flight is very similar to booking a cash flight.

Enter your flight type (round-trip or one-way), departure airport, arrival airport, travel dates, preferred cabin class and number of travelers. Once all of that information is correct, click the “Search flights” button at the bottom of the tool box.

You’ll then be shown a list of flight results that match your search query. These results include all available award flights operated by LATAM Airlines and certain partner airlines. When searching on certain routes, award flights operated by Delta Air Lines and some other partner airlines may appear. However, you can only book some partner airlines such as Qantas over the phone.

These award flight results can be sorted by traveler recommendation level, price, flight duration, departure time and arrival time. Once you find a flight that suits your needs, click on that flight to view the available fare types. When you do this, the available fare types will appear along with descriptions of what’s included with each fare (such as baggage allowance, seat selection and change fees). Click the “Choose” button to add a flight fare to your itinerary. You can repeat this process for your return flight if you’re flying round-trip.

After you’ve selected your flights, you’ll be able to choose the combination of miles and cash that you want to pay with. You’ll be given several options. Click the bubble next to your preferred option to select it. It’s worth noting that, since LATAM miles have a generally consistent value, you’ll get essentially the same value per mile no matter which of these options you choose.

Once you’ve chosen your payment breakdown, click the “Go to seats” button at the bottom of the page. You can then go on to select your seats on your flights, which may be free or extra depending on the fare class you’re booked in and the seat you select.

You’ll also need to enter some personal information about any travelers on your itinerary, including name, date of birth, country of residence, home address, phone number, email address and preferred frequent flyer program.

Finally, you’ll need to enter a payment method to cover the cash portion of your booking. Once you’ve done so, confirm your flight booking and you’ll receive a confirmation number, which you‘ll use to check in for your flight. You should also receive a confirmation email containing this number. We recommend writing this number down somewhere you won’t lose it.

Additional charges may apply when you modify or cancel an award ticket itinerary through the LATAM Pass program. So, if you aren’t sure if you’ll be able to fly on the travel dates you selected, we recommend holding off on booking an award flight through LATAM Pass.

The Bottom Line

The LATAM Pass program isn’t going to be very relevant to most U.S.-based travelers. This is because you can’t earn miles through this program by transferring points from U.S. credit card rewards programs or by spending on co-branded credit cards. That means that the most effective way to earn LATAM miles will probably be to take flights on LATAM Airlines or one of its partner airlines. However, all of these airlines are also partnered with other frequent flyer programs, which you may be better off crediting your flights to.

Plus, whereas you can get multiple cents per point in value through certain frequent flyer programs that price award flights using fixed award charts, the LATAM Pass program uses a dynamic pricing model. That means that it’s impossible to get much more than 1 cent per point in value when redeeming LATAM miles for award flights.

Nonetheless, if you already have a balance of LATAM miles in your account, you can use the instructions in this article to guide you through the process of booking an award flight.