LATAM Pass Award Pricing: A Dynamic Pricing Model

The LATAM Airlines Group is the largest airline company in Latin America with several national subsidies under its umbrella, including LATAM Brasil, LATAM Chile, LATAM Colombia, LATAM Ecuador, LATAM Paraguay, LATAM Peru and several cargo carriers. So, if you’ve ever flown around Central or South America, there’s a good chance it was on a LATAM flight.

All of LATAM’s subsidiaries also share a single frequent flyer program known as LATAM Pass, which allows members to earn miles for flying with LATAM airlines as well as with certain partner airlines (as well as in several other ways, such as booking hotels or renting cars). These miles can later be redeemed in a variety ways. However, the best way to use your LATAM miles is typically to redeem them for award flights either with LATAM or one of its airline partners.

Unfortunately, the LATAM Pass website is fairly difficult to use and award prices for both LATAM and partner flights aren’t very favorable. LATAM-operated award flights can be booked online but they’re priced using a dynamic pricing model, which means that it’s nearly impossible to get good value per mile on these flights.

Years ago, LATAM published a partner award chart on its website. However, that award chart has been removed and it seems as though LATAM may still be pricing partner award flights using an unpublished distance-based award chart. But, inconveniently, these partner awards can only be booked over the phone by calling LATAM customer service, which makes it very difficult to find partner award availability.

So, all in all, the LATAM Pass program definitely shouldn’t be your first option for a frequent flyer program. Nevertheless, in this article, we’re going to look at how this program’s award pricing works for both LATAM-operated award flights and partner-operated award flights.

Award Pricing for Flights on LATAM

As mentioned above, the LATAM Pass program uses a dynamic pricing model to price award flights operated by LATAM. While LATAM doesn’t explicitly say that they use a dynamic pricing model anywhere on their website, we can infer that they do because award prices for LATAM-operated award flights can be drastically different for the same route, even on the same day.

As you can see in the example above, these three flights from Bogota (BOG) to Buenos Aires (EZE) are all on the same day and are all nonstop. Yet, they all have different mileage rates, implying that these award prices are most likely tied to cash prices.

However, all LATAM-operated award flights that we found provided a value of about 1.2 cents per mile, including all three of the award flights in the example above.

So, no matter what LATAM-operated award flight you book, regardless of which cabin class you book in, you can expect to get 1.2 cents per mile in value. That’s pretty low compared to the value that you can get from frequent flyer programs that use fixed award charts and even compared to the value you can get from many other programs that use dynamic pricing.

Award Pricing for Flights on Partner Airlines

LATAM Airlines is a former member of Oneworld Alliance and still retains partnerships with many of the airlines in Oneworld Alliance. For this reason, you can use LATAM miles to book award flights with many Oneworld member airlines (as well as certain non-Oneworld airlines). Here is the complete list of airlines with which you can book award flights using LATAM miles:

Unfortunately, at the current time, you can’t book partner awards online. So, the only way to book a partner award flight with LATAM miles is to call LATAM customer service.

Just as with LATAM-operated award flights, partner award flights are priced using a dynamic pricing model. Because you can’t search for partner award flights through the LATAM website, it’s difficult to tell whether you’ll always get a consistent value per point when redeeming for partner awards. However, because calling customer service is a hassle and you’ll probably get poor value on partner award redemptions anyway, it probably isn’t worth even paying attention to this redemption option.

The Bottom Line

All in all, the LATAM Pass program provides little value for those who don’t fly on LATAM Airlines frequently. The program isn’t a transfer partner of any of the major credit card rewards programs, you can only book partner award flights by calling LATAM customer service (which can be a hassle) and you can’t get much more than 1 cent per mile with any redemption method (due to the fact that the program uses dynamic pricing for LATAM flights as well as partner award flights).

So, if you’re a U.S.-based traveler, the LATAM Pass program probably isn’t worth paying attention to. And, even if you tend to fly on LATAM often, you’re probably better off crediting those flights to another frequent flyer program instead of LATAM Pass.