Well, a thread about Latam - I feel the need to express some personal views.....
First up, I have flown more Latam than Qantas, and am P1 with Qantas.... (had to "big note" myself so I can be perceived as an authority
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Latam is slowly heading down a path of losing some of their previous shine - they historically were Sth America's premium airline, and have been exceptionally succesful as a business, effectively absorbing almost all competition in the continent (only Colombia's Avianca and Argentina's Aerolineas provide some competition now) But they are heading down the slippery path to almost LCC status - they have done that first with domestic routes (not just in Chile but also Colombia, etc), offerring tickets with small things like baggage as add-ons. They don't even have a domestic lounge anymore in Santiago!!!! And I feel their international product is also slipping, even though it is still quite good.
A couple of years ago they opened their great international lounge in Santiago, truly a good "hard product" - ample space and showers and rest areas, etc, and they have great wine, but the food is woeful. And it seems the lounge sort of stopped half-way through development - for example the children's area never got finished with the entertainment they had promised.
As for the flights, I consistently hear that the staff disappear - I am very much in agreement with Rooflyer that part of this is that the staff tend to avoid speaking english - I tend to get fantastic service as a spanish-speaker.
I do not like the 787 hard-product simply because the seats are way too short for abnormally tall people like myself, but can understand that for most of humanity they are nice planes.
I find it intriguing that Latam would lease 787's to Qatar??? Love to see more info on this. Almost all of this year Latam has been hit very badly by the problem of maintenance delays for their RR-engined 787's - meaning many are offline. Latam has had to lease long term replacement aircraft via Wamos Air to cover the shortfall - almost all their BOG-SCL flights are Wamos A330's, and they even have a Wamos 747 doing SCL to the USA. So I cannot understand how they could have aircraft available to lease to others???
If you get a Wamos flight, the planes are older, but the Spanish staff (all Wamos aircraft are wet-leased) are fantastic.
