Long haul carriers

[WorkingHard]

Advice from one and all please.
4 adults to NZ later this year travelling business class. There for around 5 weeks and then back UK. A few questions.
Q1 Which carrier and why
Q2 Which carrier to avoid at all costs
Q3 Which route and why
Q4 Where is the best place (price) to buy tickets

Soryy it's such a list but I have littel experience of long haul outside military.

many thanks

[Crepello]

It'll be dictated by what's most important to you - airline, routing or price. Points in order:

Q1: I've no biz-class experience on that route but a mate regularly flew economy between Europe and Australia, reckoned Singapore Airlines were the best.

Q2: Let's just say you get what you pay for.

Q3: See first para. I did a stopover in Tokyo which was fascinating, but it constrains your choice of carriers.

Q4: To get an idea of ballparks, start with the internet travel agents (if I'm allowed to mention names, the biggest are expedia.com and orbitz.com, if not then sorry mods). It's worth checking these, then checking your favoured airline's own website. These days, I find 'traditional' travel agents can only help if they're really savvy.

Hope this helps...

[phreegreens]

Q1 Which carrier and why

NZ, they go the "wrong" way LHR-LAX-AKL
Singapore and Cathay go via their own base countries.

Used NZ a number of times, service good, no sleeper beds, prices normally a bit cheaper, especially in J class. Others are fitting out with sleepers at the moment BA no longer go to AKL, code share with QF via LAX.

Q2 Which carrier to avoid at all costs

Korean if they still go to AKL

Q3 Which route and why

It's a long way, keep stops to a minimum as they add around 2.5 hours (al least). NZ offer the only one stop, same plane service from the UK. Singapore, Cathay, Malaysian will all require a plane change and maybe a wait at their home base. Qantas will be 2 stops, Far East and Aussie, with a plane change in Aus. Emirates are now doing DXB-SYD-AKL.

Q4 Where is the best place (price) to buy tickets

I wouldn't go on the net, 4 seats in J class has got to be a deal, maybe 2 sets of companion tickets, especially if you are travelling out of season.

Travelbag, Trailfinders both have deciated business class desks, check their sites for numbers. They'll come up with the deals and a pound to a cold one on the harbour front at AKL, it'll be NZ

g'luck.. :ok:

[zed3]

I would have a look at Emirates who will fly to NZ when you wish to go . OK , stop over in Dubai and maybe Sydney but service and seats good for the internet price.

[Damsel]

I travel SQ J class a few times per year on the 777 service and always find the service excellent.
The flight from SIN - AKL is a 777 or 744 service.
I'm actually off to AKL next week for 3 days but trying EK for the first time.

[Globaliser]

Number one question for choice of carrier will be: How much do you want a flat flat bed, ie not one that is flat at an angle? CX, QF and SQ all have flat at an angle (and QF is still in the process of fitting them during 2004). BA has the only truly flat bed to Australasia, but it is narrower than other seats and some people don't like the forward-backward arrangement. (Also you'd have to interline onto QF in Sydney or somewhere similar.)

There was an article about this in the New York Times - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/27/business/27sleep.html - may require free registration to read.

As far as route is concerned, do you want to do anything at a stop on the way or do you just want to get there? If you just want to get there, route is only important for overall length of journey.

[Wot No Engines]

For service (and price), Emirates take some beating, but the seats are not the best in class.

For better seating, then either BA or Qantas are probably the best - I think that all Qantas flights UK to Sydney are now flat. I personally don't notice the difference between the "angled" flat and the BA arrangement - as long as the seat goes flat, it works for me.

QF service is better than BA in my experience as is the wine. Sydney to NZ would be on a 767 with older style seats, but it's a short flight compared to getting to Sydney.

Time wise, I don't think it really matters - it's a long trip.

I would also avoid going though the US at all costs. The hastle now is just not worth it.

I always used ebookers in the UK to get the best prices on flights. Pity they don't operate down here.

[christep]

I would say CX or SQ. CX J is very good - excellent AV on demand system - 50 movies / TV progs, 100 "CD"s. The quality of service is excellent (far better on average and much more consistent than BA or AA).

If you fly CX why not stop for a day or two in Hong Kong on the way or way back?

You can generally get better prices from the CX gateways in Europe than from London. If you are coming from somewhere else in the UK anyway then you could fly to CDG or AMS or FRA on a low cost flight and pick up the Cathay flight there.

As an example of the published fares (in French) from CDG look here:
http://www.cathaypacific.com/fr/offers/local/0,,39696-44129,00.html
You can get a ticket which gets you CDG-HKG-AKL-HKG-AKL plus one side trip within Asia from HKG for EUR 4594.

You could probably do a bit better on cost with lesser airlines, but you get what you pay for.

If you really want to start from the UK then I would recommend Trailfinders ( http://www.trailfinders.co.uk ) for sourcing long-haul J fares. They have example current fares on their website.

You might also talk to them about a Round The World ticket, of which they have many types.

[WorkingHard]

Thanks everyone. All very good advice so far. What amazes me with the research I have done so far is the cost from say UK to NZ return is far far higher than the reverse route. I tried to get NZ to book the tickets for us but of course cannot use return before outbound. An example was a companion fare with Thai (I dont think I would use them but!!) at around equivalent of £1800 per person FIRST class return. So once again thanks for the advice and tell me how to avoid rip off british fares.

[Globaliser]

One trick I have heard of is to look for cheap premium class fares that sometimes come up on BA ex-LIS or ex-VIE. These must be issued in Portugal or Austria respectively, but international phone calls are wonderful things. You must fly the first LIS-LHR sector, but you can apparently organise things so that you can avoid having to fly LHR-LIS at the end of the trip. Get out to LIS on the outbound half of a cheap economy ticket and throw away the return half of that too. It's done by enough people that BA at LHR will reportedly sometimes offer to check you in all the way through to your final outbound destination. The downside is that you basically spend the best part of an extra day doing that LHR-LIS-LHR shuffle. Do it too often, though, and you might attract the attention of whatever revenue protection police BA have.

[PAXboy]

I think that you will find the reason why the AKL route is cheaper if you start from the southerly end is the same as it is from South Africa (both CPT and JNB).

For South Africans, a holiday in Europe is very expensive, due to exchange rate. Whereas, for Europeans, the reverse is true. So the carriers tip the balance of cost. We pay more for our seats and the folks down South pay less. This means that they can afford the fare to Europe, as well as the car hire/hotels/Disney etc. The way around this is to have a ticket issued and PAID for in South Africa but it requires a good agency and local funds.

I strongly suspect that NZ have done the same, otherwise, the cost of the flight would be prohibitive to many people. Just a hunch after travelling between LHR and JNB/CPT for 38 years. :hmm:

[Gradom]

Hi all,

I actually did this trip a few weeks ago. Went with Singapore in Raffles class Heathrow - Singapore - Auckland. Bought our tickets through Trailfinders, as there are four of you look out for the caompanion fares, these can knock quite a bit off the price. Tickets were about 1,700GBP each and I booked them about six months in advance, just kept an eye on the adverts in the travel supplements of the Sunday papers, there seems to be a different deal every week.

The (almost) flat bed was excellent, I normally struggle to get any sleep on flights, whatever class, but on the Spacebed I managed an unheard of six hours on each flight. The SilverKris lounge in Singapore was also a bonus, having a decent shower half way through the trip made it a lot easier.

I would certainly go that route, with Singapore again.

GD

[dtur2424]

Singapore Airlines would definitely be the preferable option as I they must truly be the world leader when it comes to long haul travel followed closely behind by Emirates.

However, due to the weak American dollar the Malaysian Ringgit (which is tagged to the dollar) is taking quite a hit as well. I'm sure you could save quite a few bob flying with MH to KL and then buying your KUL-AKL return in KL. Malaysian Airlines offers excellent service with all the trimmings and KL is definitely worth a stopover.

Hope to be of help.

[Spearing Britney]

You may know about it but www.airlinequality.com provides interesting gen...

[WorkingHard]

SB What a great site. many thanks. Anyone any views on say cathay or Malay or Thai?

thanks again to all who have replied so far

[Spearing Britney]

Malaysian, great! Get to play trivial pursuit against the rest of the plane, some great class wars there! Cabin crew uniforms only bettered by the crew in them, food great. I chose them for my honeymoon trip - there is a personal reccomendation for you...

Before i get flamed, better sleeper seats and entz are to be had elsewhere but I just like 'em OK?

PS anyone know what the fish icon is meant for?