I go to Sydney twice a year and have used many airlines, mostly in economy but I have gone first in Thai. I think it depends what you want. If it is legroom without doubt it is Malaysian these days and I used them last September and found them to be excellent. For the past couple of years I used Qantas since they had some excellent deals when I needed to go. I find the crew always welcoming, usually seem to like their job and I like the food and the Aussie beer. Indeed my forthcoming trip in April is with them. If I am travelling with my family then it has to be SQ because of the entertainment system. The seats are reasonable but the food is minuscule and served with very long intervals between meals. My favourite in economy is believe it or not Thai. They still use the old fashioned IFE system of the screen somewhere at the end of the cabin. I like that since it means more legroom under the seat in front, and in any event I am just not interested in IFE and prefer to read and sleep (which I do very successfully in economy). I have used JAL and also like the overnight in the hotel on the way back. Never used the emerging gulf area airlines but my brother absolutely swears by Gulf Air in business. He quite liked Emirates in economy but that was four years ago. The one airline I absolutely will not use now (emergencies excepted of course) is BA. I have over the past 30 years or so have often used them on longhaul. After my last trip with them in September 2005 where they had introduced a new economy cabin I found the experience verging on a horror story. The cabin is so cramped (I am not a big bloke, average 5feet 10 inches 13 stones) that I couldn't even prop up my book when the guy in front quite reasonably, put his seat back. No matter how good the deal, or the timing of the flight, I could not sit on one of their economy seats again for a flight over a couple of hours.