I fly from LAX to Singapore and then to Sydney. It's not the most direct route and it doesn't break it up but it's worth the extra time for flying on Singapore Air. They are a fantastic airline to fly even coach and if you can afford business it's even better.

The problem with "breaking up" a really long flight is that now you've got TWO really long flights. From a jetlag perspective, also, by stopping in, say, Hawai'i you're making it worse, not better: because the flight to Oz is so long and you cross the date line, it's actually like traveling a much shorter distance the other direction as far as your internal time clock goes (six hours "east" is the same thing as eighteen hours "west"). Split that, and you have to make TWO substantially larger time adjustments.

As far as the length of the flight goes, for me, it's like this: doing one 15 hour flight is only 10% worse than doing a seven or eight hour flight, so stacking two shorter (but still excruciatingly long) flights is a lot worse than just gritting your teeth and getting it over with. Take an Ambien, zonk out on the flight, and it'll be over before you know it -- and you're be THERE instead of only halfway, with a SECOND horror awaiting you the next day or whenever.

I think you might be right --- last poster --- that had occurred to me at one point! Thanks!

I have to ditto the comment about not breaking the flight up.

I'm an expat living in Indianapolis. It *used* to be that I would fly home going IND-ORD-LAX-SYD. At times I would fly through SFO instead of LAX. The longest time the journey was 44 hours, due to a flight that originated in Auckland being delayed, and therefore I missed my LAX connection to ORD and then Evansville, In. On average it takes just over 24 hours.

Because I've done this trip multiple times, I really recommend flights that arrive in Australia in the evening. I've arrived early in the morning and it just takes a lot longer for the jet lag to reside. When I arrive in the evening, I spend a few hours talking to my family and having a cuppa, before crashing. My mental alarm clock usually wakes me up around 5am Australian time, probably thinking I was taking a short nap(!!), and usually by the end of the trip I'm able to sleep until 7am before returning home.

Now that Northwest has direct flights to LAX, for the first time I will be flying home IND-LAX-SYD. There is a slightly longer layover on the return flight, but it reduces my total travel time from IND to SYD from 25 hours to 21.

I hope this helps.

Liz

PS. One more thing to keep in mind. If you stay awake on the domestic portion of the trip heading eastbound, by the time you get to the westcoast and are on your flight to Oz, you're excited about the anticipation of the trip and the length of the flight seems bearable. Coming home, getting the first 'big' flight out of the way first makes the remainder of the flights seem like nothing in comparison!

Liz