I really love traveling to South America because of the wide diversity of birds to be seen there.  Any other time I would be thrilled to death that there was a new route to South America from Australia.  Currently there is only service from Sydney to Santiago on Qantas and LAN and you need OneWorld miles to book them.  Traditionally, I have had an easier time collecting Star Alliance miles on either United or Singapore Krisflyer and theoretically these would be useful to redeem these new flights.

However Air New Zealand is the stingiest of all the Star Alliance carriers in releasing award seats, even in Y class.  I haven’t seen even Y class available between Brisbane and Auckland in 3 years!  So unless they change their ways, there is little to get excited about.  Below you see a typical search on United for partner awards on a popular trans-Pacific route.  I suspect the results will be the same on the new AKL-EZE route.

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