Never Fly LanChile

My sister and I just came back from our 2-week vacation to Argentina. It was a pretty cool trip, except that we chose to fly LanChile from LA to Buenos Aires. Never, ever fly LanChile. The experience was quite awful.

We should have known that the airline isn’t the greatest when it changed our flight twice before our flight date. The flight time coming back became longer, with a long layover at Santiago, Chile. But the real problem began the moment we got to LAX. We were scheduled to fly out of LAX at 12:30 p.m. on October 31, so that we can land in Buenos Aires around 7:00 a.m. on November 1. Instead, the flight from LAX was delayed because the captain explained that there was something wrong with the landing gear. Lan gave us vouchers to go eat and told us to come back 3 hours later instead of attempting to reroute us to different airline. At the time, Lan said THEY HAD NO IDEA whether they could take off later or not. When we came back, Lan told us that the flight will be taking off around 5. We flew out much later – around 6.

Never mind the ridiculous amount of delay, causing my sister and I to wander the halls of LAX for 8 hours (we had arrived 3 hours earlier than our flight time). We were not given much information about what was going on, or if we would be able to make a connecting flight. People were simply told that the flight was taking off, and that when we land in Lima, someone will help with making another connecting flight.

Right before we took off, the captain announced that the landing gear problem was fixed. Well, he didn’t exactly tell the truth. Lan never fixed the landing gear. Instead, they waited for another flight from Miami to come in, and we got on that plane. How do I know? I called my dad to tell him that we were finally taking off, and he had gotten that information by calling Lan. I thought it was terrible that they couldn’t tell us that was what they decided to do.

Then, we landed in Lima. Did people in Lima know what to do with few of the folks who were heading to Buenos Aires? NO. They had NO idea we were coming and was frantically searching for ways to get us out of there. It was sheer ridiculousness. Do they not have computers?? Apparently, they haven’t heard of something called efficiency and customer service. Even though they had OVER 10 HOURS TO PREPARE FOR US!!! They made about 8 of us get back on the same flight to fly out to Santiago because they said there were more flights to Buenos Aires from there. So off we went.

Once we got to Santiago, there was a huge line of folks who had to make connecting flights to various places. In the age of computers and the amount of delays we’ve had, you would think Lan would have thought ahead to figure out the connecting flights in advance. But no. We all had to stand in line at the customer service area, while folks there frantically searched for next available flights for all of us. It was sheer madness. Understandably, there were lots of people frustrated, furious, and tired. Although we spoke no Spanish (all Lan folks spoke English), Spanish speakers appeared to have gotten no better breaks – Lan simply would tell those folks that it is what it is. There were a few folks yelling at Lan folks in Spanish without much sympathy from Lan customer service folks. It’s quite grating when Lan won’t apologize for the incredible lack of service when you are simply furious about the delay and lack of information and efficiency.

To top it off, after waiting in Santiago for 3 hours for our flight to Buenos Aires, Lan managed to lose all the checked in bags of folks who were connecting to Buenos Aires. Including my sister’s. My sister’s bag that they forced her to check in, even though the luggage was standard carry-on size because it weighed 12 kg instead of their max 8 kg. Why were all the bags lost? They weren’t really lost – Lan was simply lazy and incompetent. 3 hours was apparently not enough time to transfer the bags from Santiago plane to Buenos Aires, and all the bags were still in Santiago. Except for one guy’s bag. They managed to get the bags flown over that night, and hand-delivered to all the folks at midnight. At least the driver who hand-delivered was apologetic. Even though at the counter, my sister was told that Lan’s policy is not to reimburse for temporarily losing bags. Being unapologetic was one thing, telling customers that their policy doesn’t allow any kind of compensation for Lan’s lack of service was unbelievable audacity.

Simply put, my sister and I are never flying Lan again. We tried to get a different flight home, but ended up flying Lan again. This time without major hiccups, but the woman who checked us in managed to bungle our boarding passes. I guess for Lan’s standard, being less than perfect is a good enough standard.

The lesson?? Never, ever fly LanChile. EVER. Even if it’s the cheapest ticket (which it was for us at the time we bought it). $200 more to fly an American airline, whose services you know, is a better alternative than Lan’s idiotic policies, rudeness, and inefficiency.

Well, so that was our inauspicious beginning to our trip to Argentina. We landed at night on Nov. 1, and checked into our rented apartment. Thankfully, the rest of the trip was much better than our flight from hell with Lan.