Our five-and-a-half hour flight landed in Easter Island at 12:30PM local time (the same timezone as Winnipeg). Weekly flights began in 1970, and jumbo jets could land after 1984, when NASA beefed up the runway so that it could be used as an emergency abort site for the Space Shuttle. Still, the Chilean government only allows one airline to fly to there regularly: LAN Chile. This monopoly leads to very high ticket prices. We bought our tickets 'on sale' for $508 (US) each.