"Slow boat" options - Europe to Aust/NZ
A routing query for the seasoned long-haul travellers of the SLF forum:
In July-August, I will be obliged to travel from Geneva to Australia (east coast) and New Zealand with my wife and our three young children, ages 5, 3 and 2. No sane person would voluntarily undertake such a journey with 3 kids of this age, so rest assured we are not doing it for fun. Alas, the budget will not stretch to 5 J-class tickets, so we'll be down the back. On the plus side, we have plenty of time - up to five weeks for the trip.
So I have been pondering ways of minimising the pain, and have hit upon the idea of the tramp steamer approach, making not one but several stopovers, and thus (as far as possible) avoiding being on a plane for more than 6 hours or so at a time.
One such possibility I found is Emirates, which would allow us to go Geneva-Dubai-Colombo-Singapore-Brisbane-Auckland-Sydney-Bangkok-Dubai-Geneva, all on Emirates metal and for not much more than a simple GVA-AKL return.
Another idea is round-the-world, with Star Alliance offering Geneva-Zurich-Singapore-Sydney-Auckland-Vancouver-Toronto-Geneva on SQ/NZ/AC. But this is over CHF 4,000 - approaching the cost of a cheap J-class return - and also has a couple of long sectors.
Any other ideas? We want to avoid LHR, FRA and transiting the US (all based on bitter experience), but are up for anything else.