Tips for flights to NZ

[essyroo]

Hi! We're hoping to visit family in Wellington in March and have never done such a long journey before! Any tips of best route/airline with a 7 and 5 year old will be very welcome! Thanks!

It does depend where you want to stopover... but I do absolutely love Air New Zealand, the service is great and there's is the most comfortable seat I've found compared to BA, Virgin and Cathay.

I think with a 7 year old and 5 year old you should be fine with any airline / route really. It all depends on personal preference whether you want to have a stopover or not. Make sure you have appropriate entertainment for them - personally I would take books, activity books, DS/Ipods/tablet/laptop etc and not be totally reliant on the inflight entertainment.

We have done the Australia flight with our children at ages 8 wks, 15 months, 24 months, and 5 years. The trip with my DD at 8 weeks was by far the easiest. But otherwise 5 years was fine - do be prepared for jet lag though although there's not much you can do to avoid it.

If you're flying economy I would personally avoid Cathay Pacific; we found the service great but the new seats hideously uncomfortable and I ended up a bit loopy after being awake for 36 hours...

Thank you for all the tips - it really helps to hear from others who have done it! We're thinking of having two short stopovers, in Singapore and Melbourne/Sydney. Has anyone flown with Quantas?