LATAM Airlines LATAM Pass Program Guide: Everything You Need to Know

If you’ve ever flown around Central or South America, there’s a decent chance that you’ve booked a flight with LATAM Airlines. LATAM Airlines Group is considered the largest airline company in Latin America and consists of several national subsidiaries including LATAM Brasil, LATAM Chile, LATAM Colombia, LATAM Ecuador, LATAM Paraguay, LATAM Peru and several cargo carriers. Unfortunately, due to COVID-related turmoil, LATAM was forced to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2020 and delist from the New York Stock Exchange the same year.

Nevertheless, LATAM has bounced back since the height of the COVID pandemic and is continuing to operate routes all around Latin America and even to cities in the United States including Los Angeles, Miami and New York City. LATAM also continues to operate its own frequent flyer program known as LATAM Pass, which allows members to earn frequent flyer miles and then redeem those miles for award flights as well as other types of awards.

Currently, the LATAM Pass program isn’t a very attractive program for U.S.-based travelers due to the fact that LATAM isn’t a transfer partner of any of the major transferable credit card rewards programs (such as American Express Membership Rewards or Chase Ultimate Rewards), and the airline currently isn’t part of any alliance.

To make matters worse, the program doesn’t publish an award chart for its own flights (the pricing of LATAM award flights is currently a mystery). Further, while it does publish an award chart for partner flights, this award chart is almost entirely inconsistent with the prices displayed in the program’s award booking engine.

However, in 2020 Delta Air Lines acquired a 20% stake in LATAM,and rumors have been circulating that LATAM may join SkyTeam Alliance (of which Delta is already a partner) in the near future. Delta may also push LATAM to form partnerships with credit card rewards programs in the future.

So, while LATAM Pass is a fairly lackluster frequent flyer program at the moment, there could be some upcoming changes that put LATAM Pass on the map in the world of points and miles.

In this article, we’re going to examine everything you need to know about the LATAM Pass program, including elite status, how to earn miles, how to redeem miles and which of those redemption methods offers the most value per mile.

LATAM Airlines LATAM Pass Program Overview

LATAM Airlines Group was formed as the result of a merger between Chilean airline LAN-Chile and Brazilian airline TAM Linhas Aereas in 2012. The two airlines continued to operate flights under separate brands (both as members of Oneworld Alliance) until LATAM decided to rebrand in 2015. By 2018, all aircraft owned by LAN or TAM were outfitted with the new LATAM livery.

Not long after, in 2019, Delta Air Lines announced plans to purchase a 20% share in LATAM Airlines Group and agreed to pay LATAM’s exit fee from Oneworld Alliance, both of which were completed by 2020. Unfortunately, in this same year, the COVID-19 pandemic brought international travel to a grinding halt, forcing LATAM to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy and delist from the NYSE.

However, with support from Delta, LATAM has been able to continue operations post-bankruptcy and has also continued to operate its LATAM Pass frequent flyer program (which was rebranded from LATAM Multiplus Fidelidade in 2019). Although LATAM isn’t currently part of any airline alliance, the LATAM Pass program still has some impressive partners that allow members to both earn and redeem LATAM miles. Here is a list of LATAM’s current airline partners:

LATAM Pass members can earn miles with any of the aforementioned airlines. You can also redeem miles for flights on any of these airlines with the lone exception of Virgin Atlantic. Additionally, flying with some of the airlines listed above can help you earn elite status with the LATAM Pass program, including Aeromexico, Alaska Airlines and Delta Air Lines.

LATAM Airlines LATAM Pass Elite Status Program

The LATAM Pass program offers members the opportunity to earn elite status by accumulating a certain number of Qualifying Points or Qualifying Segments within a calendar year (between January 1 and December 31). There are currently five elite status tiers in the LATAM Pass program: Gold, Gold Plus, Platinum, Black and Black Signature.

Elite status can be earned by reaching either a certain number of Qualifying Points or a certain number of Qualifying Segments per calendar year (between January 1 and December 31). After the calendar year is over, your balance of Qualifying Points and Qualifying Segments goes back to zero.

Qualifying Points can be earned per dollar that you spend on flight tickets (excluding taxes, fees and additional services) from LATAM and certain partner airlines. The number of Qualifying Points you’ll earn on a specific flight is calculated using the money (in dollars) you spent on your airfare and a multiplier that corresponds with the route you’re flying on. Here are the multipliers for every LATAM route:

• 9X Qualifying Points for domestic flights in Chile, Ecuador and Peru
• 2.5X Qualifying Points for domestic flights in Brazil
• 12X Qualifying Points for domestic flights in Colombia
• 6X Qualifying Points for international flights worldwide

So, if you spent $400 on a domestic flight in Brazil, you’d earn 1,000 Qualifying Points ($400 x 2.5 = 1,000 Qualifying Points). If you spent $1,000 on any LATAM international flight, you’d earn 6,000 Qualifying Points ($1,000 x 6 = 6,000 Qualifying Points).

Qualifying Points can also be earned on certain partner flights, including flights with Aeromexico, Alaska Airlines and Delta Air Lines. The number of Qualifying Points that you’ll earn with partner flights depends on the cost of your airfare and the partner that you’re flying with.

Qualifying Segments are accumulated when flying with LATAM only. You’ll earn at least one Qualifying Segment per flight taken on LATAM Airlines (except flights with Basic fares). However, you can earn more Qualifying Segments by flying in premium cabins. Here’s how many Qualifying Segments you could earn for flying in each LATAM cabin class:

• 2X Qualifying Segments per segment flown in Premium Economy or Premium Business cabins
• 1X Qualifying Segments per segment flown with Light, Plus or Top fares
• Flights purchased with Basic fares don’t earn Qualifying Segments

So, if you were to take a LATAM-operated flight from New York City to Montevideo with a connection in Santiago in Premium Economy Class, you’d earn four Qualifying Segments. That’s because this flight itinerary contains two segments, each of which earn two Qualifying Segments (since they’re in Premium Economy Class).

The following explains how many Qualifying Points or Qualifying Segments you need to earn within a calendar year to earn each elite status tier:

For example, in order to earn Platinum status, you can either earn 40,000 Qualifying Points in a calendar year (32,000 of which must be earned from flights operated entirely by LATAM) or you can accumulate 46 Qualifying Segments in a calendar year.

Now that you understand how to earn LATAM Pass elite status, let’s look at why you might be interested in doing so in the first place. The following chart includes the benefits that you’ll receive at each elite status tier:

It’s worth noting that every cabin upgrade is only good for one segment. So, for instance, if you upgraded a flight from Bogota to Montevideo with a layover in Santiago, that would use up two of your “within South America” upgrades since this itinerary has two segments.

Overall, the LATAM Pass elite status program is fairly extensive and offers several great benefits as well as the ability to rack up reward miles quickly. The ability to earn between 33% and 200% extra miles on LATAM domestic flights can be extremely beneficial to those who often fly domestically within the country.

The ability to gain free lounge access, receive extra baggage allowance and get free upgrades at certain elite status tiers can also be quite valuable.

How to Earn LATAM Airlines LATAM Pass Miles

The LATAM Pass program functions similarly to most other frequent flyer programs in that it rewards members with miles for taking flights on LATAM as well as with partner airlines. Members can also accumulate miles by booking hotel stays, renting cars and transferring points from certain hotel rewards programs.

In general, LATAM Pass has far fewer options for earning miles than many other frequent flyer programs. So, if you want to rack up a balance of LATAM miles, you’ll have to do so primarily by flying.

Nevertheless, let’s take a look at the different ways to earn LATAM miles so you can start saving up for your next award flight.

Flying with LATAM Airlines

The most straightforward way to earn LATAM miles is to take flights with LATAM Airlines. The number of miles you’ll earn per flight depends on the cost of your airfare (excluding taxes, fees and additional services); whether you’re flying domestically, regionally or internationally; and whether you have elite status in the LATAM Pass program.

Each elite status has a unique multiplier which is used to calculate the mileage earnings for domestic, regional and international flights. Here are the multipliers for domestic and regional flights:

• Basic:3X
• Gold:4X
• Gold Plus:5X
• Platinum:7X
• Black:8X
• Black Signature:9X

For example, if you were to book a flight within Colombia on LATAM Airlines that cost $200 (excluding taxes, fees and additional services), and you didn’t have elite status in the LATAM Pass program, you’d earn 600 LATAM miles ($200 x 3 = 600 LATAM miles). However, if you took the same flight and you had Gold Plus elite status, you’d earn 1,000 LATAM miles ($200 x 5 = 1,000 LATAM miles).

Here are the multipliers for international flights:

• Basic:5X
• Gold:6X
• Gold Plus:7X
• Platinum:9X
• Black:10X
• Black Signature:11X

So, if you took an international flight on LATAM Airlines from Nicaragua to Brazil that cost $1,000 (excluding taxes, fees and additional services), and you didn’t have elite status in the LATAM Pass program, you’d earn 5,000 LATAM miles ($1,000 x 5 = 5,000 LATAM miles). However, if you took the same flight and you had Platinum elite status, you’d earn 9,000 LATAM miles ($1,000 x 9 = 9,000 LATAM miles).

Regardless of your multiplier or the cost of your flight, the maximum number of LATAM miles that you can earn per segment is 60,000.

Flying with Partners

In addition to earning miles on LATAM Airlines flights, you can earn LATAM miles for taking flights with LATAM’s partner airlines. However, unlike with LATAM Airlines flights, the number of LATAM miles you‘ll earn on partner flights is based on the actual distance flown (in miles) rather than the cost of your airfare.

Each airline partner has its own partner earnings chart, all of which you can access by visiting the LATAM “associated airlines” page on the LATAM website and clicking on the “Find out more about…” button underneath the name of your desired partner airline.

For instance, here’s the partner earnings chart for Alaska Airlines:

So, if you were to take an Alaska Airlines flight in Business Class (fare code C) that was 650 miles long and credit that flight to your LATAM Pass account, you would earn 650 LATAM miles (650 miles flown x 100% = 650 LATAM miles). However, if you were to take the same flight in Main Class (fare code M), you would earn 325 LATAM miles (650 miles flown x 50% = 325 LATAM miles).

All partner earnings charts work the same way as the Alaska Airlines earnings chart in the example above.

It’s worth noting that LATAM Pass elite status members don’t earn bonus miles on partner flights. So, all LATAM Pass members will earn the same mileage on partner flights regardless of their status.

Hotel Partners

As with many other frequent flyer programs, you can earn LATAM miles by booking hotel stays directly with certain partner hotel chains. To do so, you’ll need to include your LATAM Pass membership number when booking your reservation directly through that hotel chain’s website. Then, any miles you earn for your stay should be automatically credited to your LATAM Pass account.

To learn about which hotel chains allow you to earn LATAM Pass miles, you can visit the “earn miles in hotels” page on the LATAM website. As of right now, though, it seems that much of the information on this page is outdated. If you really want to be sure that you can earn LATAM miles on your next hotel stay, you should contact the hotel chain directly.

Hotel Booking Engines

Another way to earn LATAM miles is by booking hotel stays through certain third-party booking engines including Booking.com, Kaligo.com and Rocketmiles.

You can earn 5X LATAM miles per dollar spent when you book stays through Booking.com. In order to do so, you must book your stay through the Booking.com partnership website. Once there, you can search for and book stays just like you normally would. However, you have to be careful not to exit out of the Booking.com partnership website, or else you may not receive any miles for your booking.

Likewise, in order to earn LATAM Miles through Kaligo.com, you’ll need to navigate to the Kaligo.com LATAM partnership website. There, you can search for hotel stays as you normally would and earn up to 12X LATAM miles on your stays. The specific number of miles you’ll earn for your stay depends on the location.

LATAM Pass members can also credit stays booked through Rocketmiles to their LATAM Pass account and earn miles. To do so, you simply need to select LATAM Pass as your rewards program of choice on the Rocketmiles homepage and search for a hotel as you normally would. Then, you’ll be presented with a list of hotels that match your search query and how many miles you’d earn for each stay. The specific number of miles you’ll earn for your stay depends on the location.

Hotel Rewards Transfer Partners

Another way to earn LATAM miles for your hotel stays is to transfer points from certain hotel rewards programs. Unfortunately, none of these transfer partners offer very favorable transfer ratios. Generally, these hotel points are better off spent in their native program than transferred to the LATAM Pass program (or any other frequent flyer program).

You can transfer points from Accor Live Limitless (ALL) to LATAM Pass in increments of 2,000 points at a 2:1 transfer ratio. Thus, if you were to transfer 4,000 ALL points to LATAM Pass, you’d receive 2,000 LATAM miles.

You can transfer Marriott Bonvoy points to LATAM Pass in quantities of at least 3,000 at a 3:1 transfer ratio. For instance, if you were to transfer 6,000 Bonvoy points to the LATAM Pass program, you’d receive 2,000 LATAM miles. Marriott Bonvoy also offers 5,000 bonus miles for every 60,000 Bonvoy points that you transfer at once. So, if you were to transfer 60,000 Bonvoy points to LATAM Pass in one transaction, you’d receive 25,000 LATAM miles.

Unfortunately, even with transfer bonuses, transferring points from hotel rewards programs is typically a bad idea. Hotel rewards points are much more valuable when redeemed through their native programs.

Renting Cars

You can earn LATAM miles by booking car rentals through Rentalcars.com (powered by Booking.com). To do so, you’ll need to visit the Rentalcars.com LATAM partnership website and enter the details of your car rental including your pick-up and drop-off locations, your desired dates and the age of the driver. However, you should be careful to not exit out of the Rentalcars.com LATAM partnership website, or you may not get your miles credited to your account.

When you successfully book a car rental through this site, you’ll receive 5X LATAM miles for every dollar spent.

How to Redeem LATAM Airlines LATAM Miles

Now that we’ve covered the different ways to earn LATAM miles, let’s look at the different ways that you can spend those miles. Of course, you can use LATAM miles to book award flights on LATAM Airlines. You can also redeem LATAM miles for flights operated by many of LATAM’s airline partners.

Unlike many other frequent flyer programs, the LATAM Pass program doesn’t allow you to redeem miles for things like car rentals, hotel stays or merchandise. However, with most frequent flyer programs, redeeming miles for anything other than award flights provides inferior value per mile anyway. So, the fact that LATAM Pass doesn’t allow you to make these types of redemptions isn’t much of a disadvantage.

In the following sections, we’ll look at the few ways that you can redeem LATAM miles and identify some sweet spots in this program that can help you maximize the value of your miles.

Flying with LATAM Airlines

Of course, you can redeem LATAM miles for both international and domestic flights operated by LATAM Airlines. Oddly, LATAM doesn’t publish an award chart for its own flights and doesn’t disclose how its award flights are priced. It seems as though LATAM-operated award flight prices are tied to cash prices.

For instance, we searched for one-way flights from Buenos Aires (EZE) to Bogota (BOG) and the award prices for economy class seats were vastly different on the same day.

As you can see, while one of the flights on this date costs about 15,000 miles (plus about $104 in taxes and fees), another flight (and a longer itinerary with the same number of stops) costs over 98,000 miles (plus about $173 in taxes and fees). So, it’s very unclear what LATAM’s methodology is for pricing their award flights.

If you were to purchase the 15,417-mile flight above from Buenos Aires to Bogota in cash for the same date, it would cost you about $289. So, factoring in the $104 in taxes and fees you’d have to pay for this award flight, this redemption would give you a value of about 1.2 cents per point, which isn’t very good.

If you were to purchase the 98,083-mile flight above from Buenos Aires to Bogota in cash for the same date, it would cost you about $1,351. So, factoring in the $173 in taxes and fees you’d have to pay for this award flight, this redemption would give you a value of about 1.2 cents per point, which also isn’t very good.

Considering that both of these flights, which had vastly different cash prices, offered very similar value per mile implies that LATAM Pass is probably using a dynamic pricing model that ties award prices to cash prices.

All in all, we currently can’t fully ascertain whether or not there’s a working formula for calculating the price of a specific LATAM-operated award flight. It seems as if award prices are tied to cash prices, and you’ll always get around 1.2 cents per point when redeeming miles for LATAM flights. If you want to know the price of a LATAM award flight for sure, you’ll have to sign up for a LATAM Pass account and search for it yourself.

While it seems as if it’s impossible to find outsized value redemptions for LATAM award flights, 1.2 cents per mile isn’t terrible. So, if you have a balance of LATAM miles, the best way to maximize their value is to redeem them for LATAM flights.

Flying with Partner Airlines

LATAM miles can also be redeemed for flights on all of LATAM’s airline partners with the exception of Virgin Atlantic. Several years ago, LATAM did have a partner award chart published on its website. However, that award chart was largely inaccurate, and it seems that LATAM has since removed it from its website.

Just as with LATAM-operated flights, it’s essentially a mystery as to how partner award flights are priced through the LATAM Pass program. However, we expect that partner award flights are also priced by distance and by segment. If you really want to know the price of a specific partner award flight, you’ll just have to sign up for LATAM Pass and search it.

Unfortunately, after searching extensively through LATAM’s website for partner award flights on a multitude of routes all around the world, we weren’t able to find any partner award availability online. So, if you want to use LATAM miles to book partner award flights, it currently looks as if the only way to do so is by calling LATAM Pass customer service.

Transfer Miles to Accor Live Limitless (ALL)

The only other way to redeem LATAM miles is to transfer them to the Accor Live Limitless (ALL) program. Unfortunately, the transfer ratio for these transactions is 5:2, which is very poor.

For instance, if you were to transfer 5,000 LATAM miles, you’d receive 2,000 ALL points. In general, this is a very bad way to use your LATAM miles. You’re much better off redeeming them for flights through the LATAM Pass program.

The Bottom Line

In summary, the LATAM Pass frequent flyer program isn’t worth paying attention to for most U.S.-based travelers. The program isn’t a transfer partner of any of the major transferable credit card rewards programs (such as American Express Membership Rewards or Chase Ultimate Rewards), meaning that flying with LATAM Airlines or one of its airline partners is the only effective way to earn LATAM miles.

However, if you’re flying with LATAM Airlines or one of its airline partners (which includes Aeromexico, Alaska Airlines, British Airways and Delta Air Lines, among others), you’re better off crediting those flights to another frequent flyer program.

The LATAM Pass program doesn’t publish award charts for its own award flights or partner-operated award flights, and it seems as if LATAM award flight prices are tied to cash prices. Online availability of partner award flights is either extremely rare or nonexistent. This makes it extremely difficult to find awards that offer outsized value. So, rather than crediting your flights to LATAM Pass, you’d be much better off crediting flights to another frequent flyer program (such as Delta Air Lines SkyMiles).

That said, Delta Air Lines bought a 20% stake in LATAM Airlines just before the airline hit a major economic downturn due to the COVID-19 pandemic. So, as LATAM continues to bounce back from its COVID-related bankruptcy, and Delta continues to invest more resources into LATAM, we could potentially see major improvements to the LATAM Pass program in the next few years. For the moment though, you’re better off forgetting about the LATAM Pass program.