I have enough Mileage Plus Miles to travel to Australia. For my travel dates flights are available from San Francisco to Sydney via Honolulu on United, or Air New Zeland is available via Auckland. Which do fodorites recommend? Thnaks.

I love Air New Zealand Airlines..great service,great food for an airline and I have flown from LAX to Sydney many times and can't say enough abot how great they are..can you get a stopover in Tahiti? Love Auckland..beautiful Country..I have not flown United to Sydney from SF but stopping in HNL would be an added incentive..
Have a great time!

I have flown to Australia on United, Air New Zealand and Qantas. United definately is LAST. Go with Air New Zealand, you can't wrong!

Interesting responses. I wanted to post I would chose Air New Zeland as I have heard wonderful things about them in the past. But I have never flown with them. I quit flying with United some time ago..one to many cancelled flights etc. But not having flown with ANZ I didn't post. Obviously SNZ is just as good as I have always been told.

I have only been to Oz one time, but we flew AirNZ and enjoyed it very much. My husband still talks about how much he liked their flight attendants. I would go with AirNZ.

ANZ hands down. I have flown both.

I have flown all three and agree with Air NZ.

Have flown Quantas Business Class to NZ and was very impressed. They found our missing checked bag that US Airways lost between San Diego and LAX, told they had found it BEFORE we deplaned, sent it on the next day Quantas flight and gave a bottle of champagne for the inconvienence of coming back to the Auckland airport to p/u the bag...
I would bet Air New Zealand would be better than United hands down as the New Zealand people are so considrate and friendly...