Since Air New Zealand axed its Auckland-Buenos Aires route, there aren’t a lot of direct flight options between Australia or New Zealand and South America. Qantas flies four times per week between Sydney and Santiago, Chile. The only other options are with LATAM Airlines, which flies to Santiago from Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland.

Although LATAM left the Oneworld alliance in 2020, it remains a Qantas partner and you can still redeem Qantas Points to fly with LATAM across the South Pacific Ocean in Business Class. I did exactly this last month.

LATAM flight LA801 operates daily from Santiago to Sydney, with a stop in Auckland, New Zealand. You can also fly on LA801 just between Auckland and Sydney, and this fifth-freedom tag flight is a popular way to cross the Tasman. LATAM Airlines offers lie-flat Business Class seats on its Boeing 787s, and its trans-Tasman airfares are often priced lower than Qantas and Air New Zealand!

In this review, I share my LATAM Airlines Boeing 787 Business Class experience from Santiago to Auckland, starting with a visit to South America’s best airport lounge.

Flight Details

Flight number	LA801
Route	Santiago (SCL) to Auckland (AKL)
Aircraft type	Boeing 787-9
Class of travel	Premium Business (Business Class)
Seat number	4H
On-time performance	We arrived 15 minutes early
Star rating

The route

Flight Cost

I booked this flight with Qantas Frequent Flyer points, as part of a Classic Flight Reward booking from Buenos Aires to Auckland (via Santiago de Chile). It wasn’t possible to book this on the Qantas website since my journey started in Argentina, and it wasn’t that easy to book via the call centre, but I got there in the end.

The cost for this booking was 104,500 Qantas Points + AU$213.10 in taxes. The Buenos Aires-Santiago sector booked into Economy Class as Business isn’t offered on that flight and there was no Premium Economy award availability.

Pleasingly, LATAM Airlines seems to have a decent amount of Business Class reward seat availability between South America, Australia and New Zealand – and they don’t levy fuel or carrier surcharges. This makes LATAM a great option for using Qantas Points to get to or from South America!

This is especially the case when you consider that LATAM Airlines Business Class fares on the Santiago-Auckland route normally start from around AU$4,000 one-way or AU$6,000 return.

Airport Experience

As I’d started my journey in Buenos Aires, and was booked on the same ticket all the way through to Auckland, I received the boarding pass for my Santiago-Auckland flight in Buenos Aires. My bag was also checked all the way through, so on arrival in Santiago I simply had to clear transit security and head to the LATAM Airlines lounge.

A quick word of warning for Australian citizens transiting through Chile: If your transit time is more than eight hours or your next flight is not on the same ticket, you’ll need to apply for a Chilean visa. Unfortunately, this is not a simple process!

Thankfully, my transit time was only three hours – which gave me just enough time to enjoy the excellent LATAM Airlines Signature Lounge at Santiago’s Arturo Merino Benitez International Airport.

Santiago is a hub for LATAM Airlines, which has multiple lounges in the international terminal. If you’re flying in LATAM Airlines Economy Class but have Gold or higher status with Qantas, you’ll have access to LATAM’s Premium Lounge. But since I was flying in LATAM’s Premium Business cabin, I could use their top “Signature” Lounge.

This was a seriously nice airport lounge. It had lots of different seating areas, as well as a kids play area, TV room, clean showers and toilets, and even a dark, quiet sleeping area at the far end of the lounge with actual beds!

There was an extensive buffet with lots of hot food available including steak, chicken, pasta, vegetables, soups and salads. The food was high quality and there were also multiple freezers filled with different flavours of delicious ice cream.

The lounge had self-service wine and other drinks, as well as fully-stocked bar staffed by bartenders who could prepare just about any cocktail you could want.

I’ve visited a lot of different airport lounges in South America, and I cannot think of any that were better than the LATAM Signature Lounge in Santiago! If you can, please let me know in the comments. Either way, it’s a delightful lounge that punches well above its weight.

Around an hour before departure, I headed over to our boarding gate. Although the screens showed that the flight was already boarding, this wasn’t the case and I waited another 20 minutes or so before Business Class was called for boarding.

As is often the case on long-haul flights to Australia and New Zealand, there was an additional bag check in the aerobridge. I’d already cleared security twice by this point – once in Buenos Aires and again when arriving in Santiago. But for some reason, the New Zealand and Australian governments think it’s necessary to conduct an additional check for liquids during boarding.

This policy already seems absurdly pointless to me, but it gets even more strange. The staff member checking my bag confiscated my empty water bottle. It was a clear, plastic bottle with nothing in it, but apparently this wasn’t allowed onto the plane. How utterly ridiculous.

The Hard Product

LATAM has two different Business Class products on its Boeing 787-9 fleet.

LATAM Airlines 787 Premium Business seat

The newer Vantage XL seats are in a 1-2-1 configuration, but the aircraft operating this Santiago-Auckland-Sydney flight had the old-school 2-2-2 Business Class layout.

The problem with this layout is that passengers sitting by the windows need to climb over their sleeping neighbours to get out of their seats during the night. To avoid this, I selected an aisle seat in the middle section of the aircraft.

With this seat design, there’s lots of space for your legs but very little privacy. There wasn’t much storage space around the seat, so I kept my belongings in the overhead locker during the flight.

The seat itself was very comfortable, and reclined to become a fully lie-flat bed.

I’m six feet tall and if I fully stretched out my legs, my head would be touching the back of my seat while my toes touched the back of the seat in front. So, this isn’t an ideal bed for someone who is very tall.

Nonetheless, I was able to get comfortable and slept very well during the long overnight flight. The cabin was dark and quiet for most of the flight, with pretty much everyone in Business Class going straight to sleep after dinner, so it was a peaceful environment for some rest. A good sleep was the main thing I wanted from this flight, so I was happy about that!

There was a personal reading light and charging outlet beside the seat. Mine worked, although my seat neighbour’s did not.

The aircraft appeared to be in a generally good condition, although I did find some rubbish in the console beside my seat that hadn’t been cleared away after the previous flight.

In-flight entertainment

The back of the seat in front had a large TV screen, which could be controlled using a remote beside the seat. The in-flight entertainment system had a fine selection of movies, TV shows and music to choose from.

The entertainment system was showing its age a bit and I had to ask the cabin crew to reset my screen three times. The problem was that I could not navigate through the system because it would immediately return to the previous page whenever I tried to select something. I also could not turn off the screen. Luckily, the third reset proved the charm and it worked after that.

Although LATAM offers Wi-Fi on its Airbus A320s that fly around South America, no internet was available on this Boeing 787-9.

The Soft Product

There were lots of goodies waiting for me when I arrived at my seat including a pillow, blanket, mattress cover, premium headphones and an amenity kit.

There was also a menu and a bottle of water beside my seat. (I hope nobody told the security staff that there were bottles of water on the plane! 😉 )

The cabin crew looking after Business Class all spoke Spanish and English. One of them was also able to converse with the Brazilian couple sitting across the aisle in Portuguese. The flight attendants were friendly and (mostly) attentive.

There were no pre-departure drinks, but a crew member came around before take-off to take my dinner and breakfast orders. This was the dinner menu:

And this was the breakfast menu:

There was also a comprehensive drinks list, including a wine list filled with South American wines. I liked how the dinner menu came with wine pairing suggestions – that’s something that more airlines could definitely adopt!

A flight attendant handed out hot towels after take-off, followed by nuts and (rather small pours of) sparkling wine.

Dinner was served an hour after take-off. As it was already 2am in the Chilean time zone, some passengers were already sleeping. I think the crew realised that most people just wanted to go to sleep, so they didn’t drag out the meal service for too long. They promptly served everything at the same time, including the dessert.

For the main course, I chose LATAM’s “signature dish” designed by Chef Renata Navarro. This was a beef brisket with potato gratin and vegetables, served with a couple of salads. The bowl of leaves with balsamic vinegar that came with dinner would have made Neil Perry proud. 😉

I’m usually skeptical about ordering beef on a plane as it’s often overcooked and chewy. This beef was tender and delicious – although the potatoes were undercooked. I enjoyed an excellent glass of the suggested South American red wine to accompany the meal.

I chose the cheese plate for dessert, although I was already quite full!

Breakfast was served around two hours before landing and came with another hot towel. This would have been 3am Auckland time, although by that point it was already 11am in Chile.

To be honest, none of the breakfast menu options really excited me but the scrambled eggs were fine. This came with some fresh fruit, granola and a choice of breads. I enjoyed a glass of grapefruit juice with breakfast.

Arrival Experience

After a good sleep, I was feeling fairly refreshed when we landed slightly ahead of schedule in Auckland.

Everyone needed to leave the plane in Auckland, including passengers continuing on LA801 from Auckland to Sydney. Passengers with connecting flights simply needed to follow the “International Connections” signs and clear security to get into the departures area.

As I was ending my trip in Auckland, I simply headed through New Zealand immigration. Landing at 5am, we happened to be the first flight of the morning to arrive in Auckland. When I arrived in the immigration hall, I was the only passenger there. I have never before seen Auckland Airport so quiet… I’m quite sure it would have been a lot busier if we’d arrived an hour or two later!

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 90 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include economics, aviation & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.