Flying from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia with LATAM

A LATAM A320. Photo / Carlos Daniel Dobelli

Pamela Wade flies aboard LATAM's LA7964 from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia.

The plane: Airbus A320-200 with a 3-3 configuration. This was a charter flight to a cruise departure but the route is a LATAM standard.

Class: The whole plane is Economy, which means at least that there's no leg-room envy.

Or any leg room. My seat: 25L, which is tiresomely right at the back, but at least was on the good side of the plane for the views en route.

Price: Included with my cruise, but tickets can be obtained for around $430 upwards.
Flight time: It takes 3½ hours to fly from the Buenos Aires domestic airport in the suburb of Palermo, over the city's astonishingly vast sprawl, then farmland and sea, to the Fiordland-like scenery of Tierra del Fuego.

Fellow passengers: From all over the world, we were headed to Antarctica and hence pretty excited.

How full: Not quite full. But that didn't help much with the leg room.

Entertainment: LATAM offers a free app for entertainment on your own device during the flight. But if you forgot to download it before boarding, there's always the bilingual inflight magazine, Vamos. This month, the cover story was on Auckland. The article inside included a world map with New Zealand helpfully located by a large arrow, and descriptions of the country as having "landscapes that look like something out of Peru or Brazil".

Food and drink: This was a breakfast flight, so it was odd to be offered a hot sandwich of cured chicken (at least that's what I think it was — it was white) and stringy cheese, plus crackers with butter and jam, and coffee with powdered creamer.

Toilets: Not worth unwedging my knees to investigate.

Service: The cabin crew comprised an intriguing set of apparently twin young men with identical stubble beards and appealing Spanish-accented English; plus a woman in charge. They were efficient during meal service and otherwise invisible.

Luggage: The usual 23kg checked and 8kg carry-on but, unusually, they were strict about the weights.

Airport experience: The Buenos Aires end is modern and efficient; at Ushuaia's new and artily-designed airport there's a Kiwi-style check for forbidden fruit, and the fastest luggage carousel it's ever been my challenge to snatch my suitcase off.

Fly again? To get to Antarctica's spectacular glories? Absolutely.