Originally Posted by
kiwifrequentflyer
But if you lived in Australia? Ugh. To fly anywhere you'd have to go through Auckland. It would be much nicer to just fly direct..
You're totally ignoring why Australians fly NZ - in many cases they can't fly direct.
You can't fly direct to IAH, EZE nor ORD for a start.
For FIFO workers flying to Southern Texas the closest you can get from Australia is DFW which then means a drive down to the coast or another flight to IAH or HOU as well as a connecting flight inside Australia to get to SYD. If you're flying from Perth to Houston (or MEL or BNE which are two other significant cities for FIFO oil workers) then NZ is the most logical connection to get there.
Given the choice of transiting through AKL or LAX to get to a destination from Australia to inside the US I'd opt for AKL any day of the week.