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Up and Over the Andes: Flying TACA from Lima to Cusco, Peru

The Embraer-190 at Cusco Airport

The Jaunted Goes to Machu Picchu Series:

One week to kill in Lima, Peru. This is what happens when you book reward flights and take whatever availability. We'd learned that lesson already. Friends who'd been to Lima before advised us to get out—one week was plenty time for a side trip of several days to bucket list destinations like Machu Picchu or Colca Canyon. And so, Machu Picchu it was, but first we'd have to get our butt over to the city of Cusco.

The quick decision meant we had done little pre-planning and, searching flights from Lima to Cusco and back, the prices were already rocketing. The eventual winner, after searching LAN, TACA and StarPeru, was TACA. We went with TACA for three big reasons:
1. For the roundtrip price ($331.96 total), competitive with the other airlines at the time of booking, we could fly Biz Class on TACA.
2. We'd never flown 'em and were curious
3. We're Star Alliance Gold status and TACA is a member of the alliance.

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RNP: Three Little Letters That Mean Big Things for Modern, Eco-Friendly Flying

"Terrain challenged" isn't exactly what you want to hear about the airport where your flight will be landing, but thanks to technology (thanks, technology!), it's now a cause for excitement rather than worry. Add this acronym to your travel vocabulary: RNP, or "Required Navigation Performance."

RNP is the hip, new navigation system that uses satellites and 3D calculations to devise the best route into an airport. Alaska Airlines, Southwest, Qantas and a couple others are old hats at using RNP by now, but LAN only made the switch in February to using the technology for the entire flight.

The lucky inaugural RNP route: Cusco-Lima, Peru. Though passengers onboard were more concerned with taking snapshots of the dramatic Andean scenery out the window, the pilots up front were enjoying 30.5 km shorter flying distance, 6.3 fewer minutes in the air, 644 kg less CO2 released into the air and 67.5 gallons of fuel saved—and that's just on a single flight!

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