Comprehensive Spread Sheet of 8 Star Alliance Award Charts: Cheapest Awards to Latin America, Caribbean

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Because you can use any type of Star Alliance miles to book any Star Alliance flight, I’ve put the eight best Star Alliance award charts into one spreadsheet. Check out why I chose these eight award charts and how Americans can get these miles here. Check out the cheapest awards within the mainland USA, to Canada, to Hawaii, and to Alaska.

Today let’s look at the cheapest Star Alliance Awards to Latin America and the Caribbean.

Remember, the spread sheets in this post only captures one part of an award: its mileage price. The routing rules and fuel surcharges matter too. Where relevant, I will note those as we go through the regions, but here are a two big things that apply to all charts:

• United, Copa, and LifeMiles never collect fuel surcharges. All the others collect fuel surcharges on most awards.
• All programs allow one way redemptions for the prices listed on the charts except ANA. It only allows roundtrip redemptions for double the price on the chart. I used its fictitious “one way price” that you can’t actually book just to more easily compare to the programs that do allow one way bookings.

Cheapest Awards to Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean

For awards starting in the mainland United States and flying to Mexico, Central America, or the Caribbean, these are the prices:

The lower price in the Copa column is if you fly Copa metal. That is the best deal to the region overall. The lower prices in the LifeMiles column are for Mexico and the Caribbean. The higher prices are for Central America.

There are no fuel surcharges on any of the Star Alliance flights to these regions, and there’s very little variation in these charts, so I’d mostly burn the miles or transferable points I valued the least.

United States to Northern South America

For awards starting in the mainland United States and flying to Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, and Ecuador, these are the prices:

The lower prices in the Copa column are if you fly Copa metal.

Again, no one collects fuel surcharges on these awards, so use Copa or Asiana miles. If you don’t have them, United miles offer a fair deal. Lufthansa and Singapore offer such terrible deals because they have all of South America in one region.

United States to Southern South America

For awards starting in the mainland United States and flying to Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia, these are the prices:

The lower prices in the Copa column are if you fly Copa metal.

Again, no one collects fuel surcharges on these awards, so use Copa, Asiana, or ANA miles–ANA miles for roundtrips only remember.

Searching and Booking the Awards

A truism of miles is that–with few exceptions–award space is equally available to all partners. One corollary is that you can search any award search engine that displays an airline’s award space, and if space is there, you can book it with any partner.

All Star Alliance partner award space is searchable on aeroplan.com. Here’s how to search for award space on aeroplan.com. All the award space you find there is bookable with all the miles discussed in this post. Ignore the price quoted on aeroplan.com. You will pay the price on the award chart of the miles you’re using.

To book, call the airline whose miles you’re using (or go to their website to book online if you can.) Feed the agent the award space you found on aeroplan.com.

Getting the Miles

Asiana miles, Copa miles, and ANA miles are the best to Latin America and the Caribbean.

Asiana miles are a 1:1 transfer partner of SPG Starpoints, which means you can transfer 20,000 Starpoints to 25,000 Asiana miles.

ANA miles are a 1:1 transfer partner of SPG Starpoints (or 20k Starpoints to 25k ANA miles), and a 1:1 transfer partner of American Express Membership Rewards.

Copa’s new ConnectMiles program doesn’t have an associated credit card, nor does it partner with any transferable points, nor does it sell its miles cheaply. For the moment, you can only get Copa miles the hard way, butt-in-seat.

Bottom Line

There are much better options to fly United, Air Canada, Copa, Avianca, and TACA flights to Latin America and the Caribbean than using United miles.

For the most part, all Star Alliance partners have access to the same award space on all airlines. There are differences in routing rules and fuel surcharges, but there are no fuel surcharges on any flights in this post.