Most years I like to travel around Easter, often on a around the world ticket or an award. I find it a great time of year as the climate at most destinations is generally not too extreme - neither the height of summer nor the depth of winter. It isn't the busiest travel period so there is generally reasonable availability as long as booked a decent time in advance.
With more and more airlines serving New Zealand, and having branched out from my original Star Alliance and Oneworld frequent flyer programs to also have Skyteam, there is a multitude of options. Especially since I want to go everywhere (perhaps not some places until things have become safer). Preferably in the comfort of business or first class since I am not built for economy.
I was reminded by
Blackcloud about a month ago that I still hadn't booked any travel for Easter. While I was playing around with some fares I stumbled across a fairly decent fare to New Zealand, and then saw there was also a sale from New Zealand to that destination. Great I can nest those.
Around the same time I starting thinking about Emirates commencing the new longest flight in the world, a nonstop from Dubai to Auckland. I have previously flown the (then) longest flight in the world on Singapore Airlines between Singapore and Los Angeles (on the inaugural flight) and later between Singapore and Newark (return on the inaugural flight in both directions). You can read about the latter in my trip report -
some FTers do the inaugural world's longest flight SIN-EWR vv. The Singapore Airlines flights have since been discontinued. While the Emirates flight is shorter than those it is still very long.
I wasn't able to fit into my schedule the inaugural Emirates flight but managed to link it in with my other tickets.
Great. Over the course of a week and a half I get to fly Qantas some more (I am approaching 500,000 flown miles on them), fly the 747 once more before it disappears (as many airlines have already discontinued this aircraft), fly some more Oneworld airlines, and fly most of the way around the world (twice) in Emirates first class.
Needless to say I was looking forward to this for the few short weeks between booking and flying on these tickets.