Auckland to London... with a toddler

Emirates might not be that bad as its only 3 hours then a break and a stretch.  Walk around etc then back on and time for sleepies. 

Singapore Airlines are awesome.. We flew with them when my mate was 6 months pregnant and she got treated like royalty LOL even got moved to better seats that were closer to the amenities and had heaps of leg room

(apart from the sniffer dogs giving her the third degree before we boarded the plane and the handler saying "haha, you must be smuggling another person")

Agree with Tishy - avoid BA like the plague.

HIDEOUS

Oh, don't fly Thai either - there is a sneaky stop in Sydney they don't tell you about.

A bit off topic for you Mikaela but avoid Lufthansa as well, they code share with Singapore Airlines. They would be out of Frankfurt however.

I used to work for Flight Centre and can say that the most popular airlines to fly (with or without kids) are Emirates and Singapore... In fact, I had several clients (with families) that refused to fly anyone but Emirates just because they are so good with kids.

They do stop a couple of times though -- you'll have a stop in either Sydney or Brisbane, possibly another stop in Singapore or Bangkok (depending on which flight you get on) and then another in Dubai before you get to London. None of these stops are forced overnight, but you can choose to stop longer than the normal few hours if you want to.

Singapore Airlines only stop in Singapore, and again usually just for a couple of hours unless you request longer. It's a pretty popular stopover destination, especially if you wanted to squeeze in some shopping, and there's some fantastic zoos/wildlife parks there for the kids. Biggest bonus with Singapore Airlines at the moment is that they've launched the big new A380 plane on their Singapore-London route, which means newer, better seating even in economy and there are some economy seats available on the top floor of the plane (just for the novelty!)

Cathay Pacific is technically one of the top three airlines, but I've heard mixed reviews as to their service. Having said that, Hong Kong is again a really popular stopover destination (shopping) and there's a Disneyland there too.

I would personally avoid either BA or Qantas, I've had really bad experiences with both their planes and service. Air NZ has improved a lot in the last few years, but if you are only stopping for one night I would avoid LA like the plague. A short stopover like that isn't going to give you enough time to do LA Disney and the airport there is really unfriendly and hard to get around. However, you can opt for a stop in Hong Kong or San Francisco with Air NZ instead if you wanted.

Hope that helps! If you've got any questions or want info on other airliens PM me.... I love talking travel    (hence the novel... sorry!!)

Funny so many people say don't go Qantas/BA. I always flew Qantas for years and they were always pretty slack but then I had one absolutely shocking experience and I'll never fly them again. We did do London with Maya on Qantas/BA and it was OK, we did it the long way (Akl - Syd - Bangkok - London) and the worst leg by far was Syd-Bangkok coz we had crappy flight crew.
Haven't flown Emirates long haul but we have done Akl - Syd a few times and they are great.

I've flown a few times from Saudi to NZ return with a stop over in Hong Kong with Cathay Pacific. First time was when Zac was 5 months and they were horrible both ways and didn't offer any help even though I was on my own. The next time I had Zac who was 1 and my step-daughter who was 4 - still no help and they hadn't ordered childrens meals for SD. Return was a bit better as I had DH with me. Another time inbetween with no help again and the last time we flew back to NZ for good we had Zac who was nearly 2 and Samara who was 3 months old and once again they had no children meal for Zac but were a bit more helpful this trip.

I wouldn't fly with them every again though. The only reason we kept flying with them as they were the only flight that had one stop over and the other airlines had two or more.

Air New Zealands long haul service is a lot better than their domestic service

They fly through LA and Hong Kong to London and the best bet is through HOng Kong.

Best to always have a couple of days break on stop over, otherwise it does make it a long and unpleasant two days flying.

I've done the flight 5 times now (mad I know) and because of Charlottes peanut allergy we have only been able to fly with Qantas or Air NZ (emirates/singapore both serve peanuts inflight). I found both really good (although I had bad experiences with staff of both airlines at Auckland airport- but every other flight/airport was fine so I blame the airport!) but the LA-London leg of the Qantas flight was with BA and they were pretty appalling- so I would go Air NZ over Qantas now.

We have stopped over in Singapore, Oz and LA on our trips and out of those I would recommend staying in Singapore.

Everyone I know who has flown Emirates totally recommends them- have heard good things about SIngapore AL too.

tishy wrote: A bit off topic for you Mikaela but avoid Lufthansa as well, they code share with Singapore Airlines. They would be out of Frankfurt however.

I second that, and they don't provide infant seat restraints (you know the ones that go through your belt and around the littlie) Singapore was good, but the bassinette was designed for asian babies who may be generally smaller than my clodhopper. and Air NZ were great. singapore great stop over and could reccomend San Francisco too (only stop overs I've done with a child).