Every February my grandfather invites me to the south of Chile (to the beautiful, amazing city of Puerto Varas). I've been doing that every year since 2009, and always on LAN Airlines (now LATAM Chile), but this year I was trying the new services for the very first time. My flight was LXP273 and I was taking the SCL - PMC route (Santiago to Puerto Montt).
I also have the video trip report of all of the experience here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSsiUzrH9NA&t=829s
There's missing audio but after some minutes in it's all good.
On with the show!
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It's Friday 2nd February 2018 and I'm here at SCL on a hazy morning. Check in and all of the other normal processes were very quick. I got to experience one of the new LATAM Chile check-in machines at SCL. Very friendly staff too!
This is the view from the domestic area. You can see one of the brand-new (yet failing) A320neos that LATAM Chile received in December 2017.
Here's some terminal plane spotting I did. Here's CC-AWE, the newest JetSmart bird: Seagull. Love it!
Then we went downstairs to board our aircraft via remote. Boarding was fast and safe.
Here's CC-BEN, one of the newest A321s in the fleet:
And we finally arrived to our aircraft: CC-BEP, my favourite A321, and the newest one! As much as I loved the LAN Airlines 2004 livery I can honestly say the current, new 2016 one is by far one of the greatest they've had in their history. So futuristic and nice with all those stripes going back and forth!
Very nice legroom on a normal seat. I'm 1,80 m tall and I could put my entire backpack in there. Comfy, nice seats too. There's only one class (Economy) in these domestic Airbuses. My seat was 07L.
After spending some minutes waiting for the A321 to get ready we finally took off (a bit late, not a big deal) at 09:44 am bound for the south!
This is a view of the Cantillana Mountain Range, south of Santiago.
Love the new red sharklet! Much better than seeing just plain white...
Some 25 mins after takeoff the service was served. Absolutely loved the food. This is a very nice apple juice with mechada sandwich (meat with caramelized onion, cheese, etc) and a very nice muffin made of chocolate and berries. VERY tasty and in good state!
Cruising at FL330 (33,000 feet) near Temuco.
Very nice Recaro seats as I said above:
Quiet cabin as we started descending towards Puerto Montt
Cloud cover that told us we were definetly in the south:
On final approach here
And we landed! 10:58 am local time at PMC. Very smooth landing on runway 17!
Lovely crew let me get in the cockpit.
End of an excellent flight:
The excellent, 10-out-of-10, Puerto Montt airport. Very fast, clean and efficent in all aspects.
Our aircraft after we left the terminal. This is a very spotter friendly airport.
After all of that I spent a very nice week on the south. Still missing it all. Here are two shots that show how beautiful it all is. This is inside the Vicente Perez Rosales National Park:
That's all of it! Hope you liked it.
Now my review on the service and everything: in one word it was all just outstanding. This was way better than all the other flights I've had with them before. LAN (as LAN Chile, LAN Airlines or LATAM Chile) have always been amazing and known for their service all around the globe, but this is just on another level. Really shows they got out of their hole (2016 was not the best year...).
Congratulatios to the crew, the people of LATAM Chile, the staff, etc, everyone who made this one of the best flying experiences I've ever had. If you're ever flying domestic around Chile I really recommend you LATAM Chile or JetSmart. SKY Airline is alright.
Thanks for reading this and I hope you all liked it!
Have a great week everyone!
