Originally Posted by benoit
I can't find any rule that prohibits your surface sector and flight between Australia and NZ.
Since you also have several flights within Australia, double check that you don't have more than 1 flight that goes between either Perth and BNE/CNS/SYD or Darwin and MEL/SYD.
The only way you could do SYD-HKG-LAX is if you had come to Australia from Europe on a single plane service (no stopovers or flights within Asia on the way to Australia other than a few hour plane refuel in SIN/BKK). If this is how you came to Australia, you could do several Asian stops after Australia before continuing to LAX. Stopping in HKG adds a great deal of time to your flight to LAX (9 hours?), but hey it's Cathay so I understand the idea.
He will have paid for Asia and is free to use his segments there, either on the trip from Europe or on the trip to North America, just not both. And the "short refueling stop" isn't in the star file - just "without stopover." That just has to mean "next flight onward, or 24 hours, whichever comes first."