Hello everyone,

I'm in the process of planning a *A RTW for September/October right now, and to get around Australia I'll be booking a flight or two on QF.

I plan on going from AKL to MEL on October 2nd, but because routing directly to MEL would kick me into the next mileage level (34K instead of 29K) and raise my fare by more than 400 Euro, I plan on flying to SYD on NZ using my RTW and booking a connecting domestic flight on QF.

I plan to take NZ 101, which gets into SYD at 08:30 am - which QF flight should I book for my connection to MEL? I was initially thinking I should easily be able to make QF423 at 10:00 am, especially if NZ can check my luggage through, but having since looked at the SYD airport website I am no longer so sure that that is the case.

So I figured I would ask the experts:

1.) How much time should I plan for my connection? Which flight would you buy (10:00, 10:30, 11:00, 11:30, etc.)?
2.) Will NZ check my bags through to QF if the QF flight is on a seperate ticket? (Almost got burned by this one on an EI to LX connection recently).
3.) I noticed the 10:30 flight is on a 734 while the 10:00 and 11:00 are both on 763s. Am I correct in assuming that the 763 is far more comfortable?

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

Thanks and cheers,

Alex