[shakyle2906]

Hi

Thinking of either going back to Uk next Christmas time/early January or flying parents in law out to us. May well be early January but guess it will still be fairly pricey........

Can anyone recommend an airline, we flew over with Air NZ when we came over last year ?


Many thanks

Sharon
x

[Croft]

Everyone has their favourites - to be honest in economy they're all fairly similar. Air NZ has the benefit of having a class leading seat pitch and personal entertainment systems, both of which make the long flight that much more manageable. Also if at least one leg of your trip is via LA you get 46kg luggage rather than 20kg. Air NZ also have a sale on until 4 Feb, but only for travel up until Dec.

You may have guessed I'm an Air NZ fan!

You're right about Dec not being a good time to fly - Jan and Feb would be much better.

[alan999]

I am an ANZ fan too, for all the above reasons. Thought I was on my own. Much has been said about the biosecurity at LA but I've never had any problems with it. Families with children or special needs are zoomed to the front and frankly standing in a queue for 1/2 hour or so isn't a probem, having been sitting down for 10 hours and another 10hr sit in the near future. And free drinks and bickies! Most people though just want to sit down as soon as possible when getting off the plane.
Not much time between landing and taking off either, fine for me but again many people seem to want hours taking in the fineries of airport construction rather than getting on with the journey.
As perhaps you can gather, travelling does nothing for me. We're all different and for those who want to make more of it, especially with a stopover there are better ways.

[alan999]

Hi

May well be early January but guess it will still be fairly pricey........




I've found that if you book early enough there isn't much loading of the price. As the seats get taken, the price goes up so obviously at Christmas they will start to increase sooner. If you look at December fares in November they will seem expensive, but I doubt they are now.

[alan999]

Just had a quick check, booking now for travel dec 20th , return 26dec(!) is only about $80 each way dearer than the flights I'm checking for myself at the end of April this year.

[randomone]

singapore airlines is my favourite. Yes, Air NZ have bigger seat pitch but their service is nothing like Singapore Airlines. and Singapore Airlines is cheaper too

[StevieD]

Sharon, we came with Singapore, they were brilliant, clean, very friendly, excellent service, nothing too much trouble for them. We are expecting Jan's mum down with them in June, and we are travelling back to UK with them in July, flown with lots of airlines and they really are very good.

[Croft]

singapore airlines is my favourite. Yes, Air NZ have bigger seat pitch but their service is nothing like Singapore Airlines. and Singapore Airlines is cheaper too

This is what gets me - I've heard people say Singapore is cheaper but whenever I fly Air NZ is significantly cheaper, and I've no complaints over their service either (though never having flown on Singapore I can't compare). Is it cheaper from NZ?

[alan999]

I thought I'd google about and check out prices, again. To cut a long story short I'll be flying Emirates in April, for $950 per ticket less than ANZ. That's a $1900 saving!!
Singapore were in betweeen, but lengthy connections, up to 8 hours ruled them out.
Pros and cons? Heavily in Emirates favour, only losing out over ANZ in the luggage department.
Pros were flying straight into Manchester from Dubai without the dreaded final Heathrow/ Manchester leg.
The rewards scheme. I never bothered with ANZ because it seemed that you had to circle the world 4 times to earn enough for a bottle of water. And pay $50 to be a member. With Emirates, with this single flight I earn enough for a free ticket to Aus (don't know if it's return) and an upgrade to "Silver" status for my next booking, meaning an extra 8kgs (still 1 piece), queue jumping and lounge pass and loads more. The points don't need to be for the Aus flight, they could be used for anything, upgrades etc. And it's free to join. One more flight and I'll attain the highest "Gold" level and travel like a Lord.
Also seat pitch and width is greater and I've already booked seat numbers.
So an example of things never staying the same. Check this site for advice on seats positions, it lists all the different aircraft used by all the different airlines (the same aircraft for different airlines often have different cinfigurations.)

http://www.seatguru.com/

So thanks to the forum, I'm treating myself to a 42" LED TV.

Alan

[Jon&Candy]

We flew with Malaysia Airlines and were very impressed. One thing I would reccomend is to try to get a 12 hour gap between flights at the stop-over, and hire a room in the airport transit hotel. The best sleep you will ever have!

[Croft]

It appears that there are significant differences between which airlines are cheapest whether you originate from the UK or NZ. Most probably the same applies from North America to. One of our relatives had to fly to Europe from NZ at short notice and the cheapest option for her was a Quantas/BA combination.

[pinkpiggy]

We have previously flown a combination of Quantus/BA and would not recommend it. The crew were awful (won't go into detail) and one of our flights turned out to be the Australia version of Easyjet (JetStar I think) which we were not told about. So, having arrived in Sydney very early in the morning to find we couldn't even get a drink as the cafes were closed (duty free was open tho) we could only manage to buy one cup of coffee on board, as we didn't have any cash left and they wouldn't take a credit card. Not good.

When we came to NZ this time we flew Singapore and they were fantastic. The children are treat like royalty, getting their meals ahead of the adults. The crew were brilliant, very friendly and nothing was too much trouble.

[Perksy]

We flew over to NZ in November and back a week before Christmas and cheapest we found was Singapore Air. Very pleased with the flight, service. They do a flight where you only stop over an hour there and back. We literally came off the flight round to the next gate and boarded again. Some people thought we were mad but it really made a noticeable difference to the overall journey with a lot less sitting around at airports. We will go via LA for baggage when we move over but I would definitely do the Singapore trip for hols.

Kim