Buenos dias from beautiful Buenos Aires. I flew here last night from Miami on LAN Argentina (on a Dallas to Buenos Aires $900 roundtrip business class fare I booked a couple of months back), a flight I was quite excited about since it was my first time flying with the LAN group. While I’ll of course share the full details upon my return, I figured I’d provide a quick rundown of the experience.
Seat
The business class seats are fully flat and actually reasonably comfortable. As is the norm with six across seating on a 767, shoulder room was a bit tight, but having a fully flat seat to South America really is a luxury, given that a majority of airlines offer recliners or angled flat seats. I was able to sleep for a solid four hours, which is about as good as I’ve ever done in business class to South America.
Food
The food was fine. I’d say it was actually marginally worse than American’s catering. There was a salad, appetizer, and cheese plate all on a single tray. Then I had steak as my entree, which was dry as could be, and made American’s domestic steaks look tasty. Then for dessert I had the cheesecake. All in all a decent meal, though nothing that can compete with Austrian or Turkish, for example.
Service
It’s rare I say this, but the crew was horrible. When the flight attendant was taking meal orders I asked if it would be possible to get the cheesecake and ice cream. She looked at me as if I had offended her, said “no,” and then after a moment continued with “we only have enough for one, but maybe if we have extras I could bring you one.” I can’t convey the way she said it, but I was really surprised by the tone.
The service was efficient. Too efficient. It took about an hour into the flight before the meal service began, but once it did it took all of 20 minutes to be served the entire meal. They’d take your trays and give you the next course while you still had food in your mouth.
Then LAN has innovative room service style breakfast ordering cards, so I placed an order for breakfast when I went to sleep. Instead of being awoken by a friendly flight attendant wishing me a pleasant morning, I instead felt like I was being reprimanded for doing something wrong — “if you are going to have breakfast you will take out your tray table and put your seat up now.” And go figure she actually served me someone else’s breakfast by mistake, and when she served me my breakfast the order was still wrong.
Conclusion
Because of the fully flat seat I would choose LAN again if the alternative is an angled flat seat on another airline. However, the food didn’t really impress, and the service definitely disappointed. The flight attendants had no charm and were borderline rude.
All in all, a comfortable though forgettable business class journey…
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