* Interesting research this has been, and thanks to those who’ve contributed.
The attractions of Emirates and Singapore are more than outweighed by the stopover times. SQ is fine on the way out but a stop of over seven hours is required on the return. That’s not fun! Further, all require a change of flight which offer the potential of missing the connection and/or the baggage not transferring properly, causing major disruption at the destination (especially when you are staying remote from the destination city and need the bag contents to do what you went to do!)
In the final analysis, even with the additional stop (AKL) the round trip offer by Air NZ, even at about 8% more is the best deal. One stays in the same a/c at Hong Kong with a leisurely transfer to domestic at AKL and checking in for the return domestic transfer at CHC for the international flight from AKL means you won’t miss that either!
I’ve come to the conclusion that that I’ll stay with them! It’ll be 29 years since I first did the route, though then it was only available via Los Angeles (and what a hell hole that was back then.)
The crews are very good too!