Would this journey be completely mental?

[bananasarebeautiful]

Emirates to Auckland-which involves a 20 hour flight (refuelling somewhere?? not sure) from Dubai. Is this survivable? I have a horrible feeling it's not and yet it's so cheap....

Hi, I think we've gone off the Emirates option. Am going to keep checking all options and see if anything reasonable comes up with slightly easier looking flight times. A few years ago we had a cheap stopover in Singapore-which was great-but I really don't want to pay too much extra just to break the journey. I think it is the whole thing of having to pay for four people (on one income)-the prices just seem obscene!

Have you checked directly with Singapore airlines website? I travel regularly to Singapore from London and have found their prices v good even compared to BA direct or any of the Expedia, opodo websites.

Good luck. I have a friend who went with a ds1 who was 2 and a new born ds2 who was 6 weeks. They went from Munich to Frankfurt to Dubai to Sydney to Auckland then Christchurch......

Give emirates a call, we flew back from Brisbane, the only advertised stop on our flight was Dubai, when we got to the airport we found we were going via Singapore, for some reason they don't show all the stops

Wow drcrab, your friend is brave/crazy! It is amazing what we can put ourselves through.
Nancy-that is very interesting as my friend was telling me similar. It's still not ideal for us (well, the price is!) as we'd have to fly to Dublin first and I'd worry about something happening to the first flight which would affect the whole trip.
I did double check the Singapore website but didn't have much luck.

We've done the Glasgow/Dubai/Melbourne/Auckland route with Emirates twice, both times with baby/toddler + older child. Emirates are great with children and have skycots, toys, film screens on the back of the chairs....twice we had a ten hour stopover in Dubai with a couple of free hotel rooms thrown in, but this time we are going straight through. DO check all the timings on the Emirates website + try sorting the results by "timetable" and not by "price" - there is sometimes only a difference of £20 or so on the longer flights and speedier options are available. The only other thing I would recommend is absolutely scrupulous personal hygene on the flights - wipes and gel whenever anyone moves from their seat/eats etc. We all ended up with sickness the first time, but were very very careful on our second trip and were fine. It's not fun but definitely bearable!

Ok Lemon, that's good to know-bearable is as good as it gets! Will check options from Glasgow too in that case.

Still seems cheapest from Dublin-much cheaper, bother!

If you have to fly to Dublin, could you look at flights via America? We are thinking of going that way on our next trip as I would rather stop over in USA

I would say it's worth going with an airline which flies the new A380 - it's just a wee bit more comfortable. The seat pitch is ever so slightly better, and as they're newer, the facilities are just a wee bit shinier.

If you do go Qantas, make sure your long legs are operated by Qantas, and not BA. You will notice the difference - and it's not just my anti-BA bias! :) For example, all Qantas long hauls have seat back tvs, etc. I'm not paid by Qantas - honest!

Also, if you fly Qantas, they generally chuck in the EDI-LHR leg for free/£20, and if it's all on one ticket, then it's their responsibility to get you there if you have problems with your flight down to London. Just be warned that even though you can make your connection at Heathrow, your baggage may well not (or maybe we're just cursed!) and take a good 2-3 days worth of stuff in your hand luggage.

The best I can find at the moment is Malaysia (from Edinburgh) at around £4500 for the four of us (travelling in January). Does this sound ok?
I really only want to pay £4000 or less!!

I'd say it depends on when in Jan you're going. If I remember rightly, prices drop after about the 15th?? I've had a quick look on Skyscanner, and going on 16th Jan, and I'm getting a total of £4400 for 2 adults, 2 under 12s (BA/Qantas). I see Ethihad also has a sale on, if you're prepared to head down to Manchester, which might be worth it? Might be worth checking with an agent such as Flight Centre or Trail Finders to see what they can offer too - they sometimes know about special fares, etc. I would say that I've found the service from Austravel to have gone down considerably since they were bought over....

Just found a brilliant price on skyscanner-clicked to book it but the next page wouldn't load. Looked at airline website directly and it told me 'date not available'. Tried another link via skyscanner-'price not available'.
Losing will to live!!

Then found reasonable price on expedia and was at the point of entering credit card details when I discovered I had chosen the 5th to the 11th of the same month-ie a week round trip!! Quickly cancelled it and think I will wait until tomorrow before I try again!
Malaysia for around £4k is best I can find at the mo.

Good luck bananas - If you're waiting until tomorrow, I'd say call Flight Centre (they do hotels, etc. too). If they can't find you anything cheaper, they'll price match anything you can find online with any major airline, if I recall correctly, and also then you've got the full ATOL/Airline failure cover. For example, when I got stuck abroad because of the ash cloud, they did most of the sorting out, instead of me, because I'd booked through them....

You just need proof that the cheaper ticket is still available for them to match it. I got them to match an Air France ticket to Japan, and also a KLM one to South Africa. They are also an Aussie owned company, so there's plenty of outlets in NZ too, should you need to make any changes/need help when you're there... Worth considering.....

Oh that's very interesting-would rather someone else did it for me if they can match the price!