from beach to beach
Hello and welcome to this first report on this route!
I have been very lucky to go and travel in South America with my other half for 4 months from Argentina to Colombia.
We were flying from the paridisiac Colombian island of San Andres to the historical an caribean town of Cartagena.
During our 4 months trip in Latin America, we went to a lot of places in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuator and Colombia.
Way out:
London - Paris CDG: Air France A320 report here
Paris CDG - Buenos Aires EZE: Air France Boeing 777-200 report here
Argentina
Iguazu - Buenos Aires AEP: Latam A320 report here
Buenos Aires AEP - Salta: Latam A320 report here
Salta - Cordoba: Aerolineas Argentinas B737-800 report here
Cordoba - Mendoza: Aerolineas Argentinas (Austral) E190 report here
Chile
Santiago - Antofagasta: Sky Airlines A320 report here
Peru
Lima - Iquitos: Viva Air A320 report here
Iquitos - Lima: Viva Air A320 report here
Nazca flights: Touristic bonus Report Here
Colombia
Medellin - San Andres: Latam A320 report here
San Andres - Cartagena: Latam A320 report here
Santa Marta - Bogota: Latam A320 report here
Way back
Bogota - Paris CDG: Air France B787-9 report here
Paris CDG - Londres Heathrow: Air France A318 report here
Avios Miles earned with this flight: 111 Avios
Status earned: 5 Tier points
at san andres airport
As experienced earlier, Latam has an App that is well designed, user friendly and fast i must say: you can see your itinary, know your seats and luggage allowance at a glance, and of course download your boarding pass.
The AvGEEK Bit
Latam is merge of two majors of airlines that happened in 2010, Lan (Chile) and Tam (Brasil). The merge kicked off when the family owning Lan and the family owning Tam started to order equipment and aircrafts together to save costs, and the group now comprises Latam Brasil, Latam, Chile, Perou, Argentina and Ecuador. In 2013, the group went further in the merge of its structure and consequently TAM left Star Alliance for LAN’s membership of Oneworld, enabling the latter alliance to have as member what is now Latam, the largest south American airline.
We arrived at the old airport, and usually i am not too fussy about AC but with that heat just a few fans don't do the job.
We proceeded to the baggage drop off straight away. The staff at the counter was very slow and having fun, which i didn't mind so much except it took twice as much time as it would normally. They didn't seem to care much, not even weighing my lugguage which was great as i was 2kgs overweight!
She took the some sort of immigration form we were issued on arrival.
We then went through security quite quickly - with bottles full of water (not causing any issues it seems in Latin America).
The boarding gate area has a limited view and it was dark so no spotting here.
Today our LATAM bird was an A320-200.
Aircraft: Airbus A320-214
Registration: CC-BAT
Engines: 2x CFM56
Age: 8 Years
Layout: W45 Y174
Observation: with the new Latam livery
on board the a320
Boarding didn't happen by group numbers, but in the old fashion way.
Our seat were clean and all equiped the usual magasines and safety instructions, the seat picth felt quite small, something you would normally find on board low cost airlines.
Today we were on the Emergency exit seats and the crew explained to us the procedure to follow in case of a what if situation happened. There was also a specific leaflet for these seats.
Although the cabin was equipped with over head monitors and volume control on arm rest, these werent used.
We took off with a 10 min delay, after safety briefing performed by the crew and an announce from the captain.
the crew quickly started their on board service and we chose the "combo" sandwich/crisps with a drink for 18,000 Pesos colombianos. Athough the cost seemed fair (4,5€ / £4,2) i am always disapointed when a major does follow the low cost approach - it just seems mean and tight.
Per flight radar 24 we reached 37,000 feet quite quickly and the rest of the flight was smooth withou turbulences.
Latam magasine was offering a fair amount of travel ideas and surprisingly not too many adds.. Like anynother avgeek I am always looking at the fleet page and instead of just being exposed line by line, here they were all drawed as if they were in a same airport (with a few mistakes: the A350 seems larger than the B777!).
I also checked the Latam play - the app you have to download prior boarding and once on board you need to connect to their wifi network (although this is not a wifi service per say, just to stream movies on your own device). The amount of movies/series/documentaries availble in 3 languages was quite impressive, especially if we compare with Joon or Air Canada rouge that have the same offer.
The descent went smoothly, and landing was a hard one. Sometimes the pilot lands more heavily in case of rain but that wasn't the case.
arriving at cartagena airport
The airport seemed new and modern, wirth plants, large, bright and AC'ed rooms.
The luggages arrived soon after.
