Seeking StopOver Ideas for US to Australia Trip
 

We're 2 fit adults planning a trip from San Francisco to Australia/New Zealand for March 2017. Does anyone have suggestions for a destination to stopover at for 2-3 days on the way to Australia/New Zealand? We've done stopovers before and love the opportunity to squeeze in another destination on a trip, for instance by stopping in Rome on the way to South Africa. We're looking for something pretty convenient en route, not a complicated stopover. Thanks for any help. I'll probably post again asking for travel suggestions as we firm up travel dates and routes.

The most direct route between California and Australia and New Zealand is a direct flight. And depending on how much time you have, there will be plenty to occupy you in either country let alone possibly sampling both. If you are really keen on a stopover (I used it to explore places too and enjoy it when it's convenient to do so), then I suppose Honolulu, Tahiti, and Fiji are the most logical given the availability of flights. You could also go via East or Southeast Asia (e.g. Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok), but you would be adding hours to your flights.

Honolulu/Hawaii if you can fly with Hawaiian Airlines? Possibly Tahiti but this will add hours to your flight time.
The Pacific Ocean does not have the land mass such as Europe to make stopovers an easy choice either and it could be very expensive.
Australia and New Zealand will provide a great holiday on their own IMO.

On one of our trips to/from Australia we stopped over in Fiji for 4 nights. I still talk about that trip. We stayed on the Coral Coast in a smallish hotel. We love to snorkel and we snorkeled in front of our hotel everyday. Almost, but not quite as good as the Great Barrier Reef. So relaxing. Whenever I get stressed out, I threaten to move to Fiji!!

As others have mentioned there aren't that many places to stop on the way between Australia and the US. If you fly with Air NZ, they will go via Auckland so you could stopover there. With Hawaiian you could stop in Oahu. Places like the Cook Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, the Solomons etc would be more problematic with airlines I think. If it were me, I'd just fly direct and spend more time in Australia (or NZ).

I don't think you mentioned how long you have for your trip. There is a lot to see in each country and the distances in Australia are huge (its about the same size as America but with far fewer people) so you will need all the time you can get.

I guess you know a stopover will increase the cost of your airfare quite a lot.

Kay

Fly direct and spend more time in NZ. You'll thank me later.

We are using miles to fly to Australia in Sept from DFW and are being forced to stop in Honolulu on the way, so we are using that to have a day on the beach there. It breaks up the long flight so are glad to do it. It's not going to cut off much of the flight time from California though.

We've done this trip (between US and Australia) a few times stopping for a couple days in Hawaii twice and once in Tahiti for a couple of days but it's gotten "old". HOWEVER, after visiting NZ on our last trip I echo Melnq8's advice - skip the stopover and spend the extra time in NZ - it's a fabulous country.