I must echo Down Under Flyer's correction of Kiwi Flyer's assertion that hardly any Australians fly on Air NZ to Honolulu.

In fact, only SYD has non-stop services to HNL, and most are operated by Jetstar and are very unappealing.

I attended a major conference in Honolulu last year. My colleagues from Sydney mainly flew Qantas, but my colleagues and I from MEL, ADE and BNE all chose to fly Air New Zealand, because AKL is a more convenient connecting point than SYD (no terminal change) and because the product is so much better.

Interestingly, NONE of us flew in to AKL on a widebody - we all took the last A320 on the Friday and stayed over to take the morning flight on to HNL.

If this convention had occured 18 months later, I'm sure that we would all have concluded that the Air NZ option was even worse than Jetstar (no Tasman business seat, plus an overnight stay) and we would all have ended up flying Qantas. I certainly would. I wouldn't give up an extra day's annual leave just to take a lunchtime widebody to AKL, when I have to overnight there anyway.