Flying from New York to Chile – Direct or Cheap Airline Flights

You can fly direct from New York to Chile for under $1,000 return. Non-stop flights to Santiago are usually around $200 more than flights with one or two stops. You can fly out of either JFK International Airport or Newark Liberty International Airport. The airfare is lower on average out of JFK Airport. You can try using a travel search engine like Travelocity or Mobissimo to see what I am talking about.

If you want to do a search, the airport codes are JFK for JFK International Airport. EWR for Newark Liberty International Airport. SCL for Comodoro Arturo Merino Benitez International Airport in Santiago, Chile. The international airport in Chile is also called Pudahuel Airport. This is the same airport.

American Airlines and LAN Airlines offer direct flights out of JFK. LAN's air fare is usually better priced than American Airlines on the flight to Santiago.

The flight time between New York, NY and Santiago, Chile is 10 hours and 50 minutes on the LAN flight. The LAN Airlines flight is on a Boeing 767-300.

As of Spring 2011, TACA is the airline with the best priced flights to Santiago, Chile from NY. It is not a direct flight. The approximate cost of a TACA flight is $700. TACA is my favorite airline when flying in Latin America. I find that their fleet of planes is well serviced and their fleet is quite new. In September 2010 their fleet of airplanes was 4.4 years old. They have won several awards in 2009 and 2010 recognizing their airline and cabin crew. In both 2009 and 2010, Skytrax awarded TACA the honor of Best Airline in Central America, Best Regional Airline and Best Cabin Staff Central America and the Caribbean.

That sure sounded like I'm advertising or working for TACA. I'm not, it is just that most of my friends have not heard or traveled with TACA and when I mention I'm flying on TACA some have assumed that means it is not going to be a quality flight. Flying with TACA, I feel like the staff are happy I'm on the plane and it's like air travel used to be prior to the days of ultra discount flights. You are served a good meal with a smile.

The cheapest flights to Chile from New York are almost always the one or two stop flights. COPA is another airline with consistently well priced flights to Santiago. They are an airline with a hub in Panama City. So any flights to South America are routed through their hub in Panama.

This is one of South America's busiest airports. In 2009, it serviced over 9 million passengers. There are 10 gates in the international section of the airport. It isn't nearly as large or busy as JFK's airport. For comparison, JFK handled over 45 million passengers in 2009. The huge earthquake on February 27, 2010 caused some damage to the terminal, but the runways were not harmed. The airport was closed for less than a week and was re-opened on March 3, 2010.