The premium market is largely to LHR, hence the focus on LHR!

After LHR, the European airport whose catchment area includes the next largest number of passengers to NZ is probably Manchester ahead of Frankfurt, but even northern England only has a 787-sized premium market.

There is no number three after LHR, MAN and FRA, the rest of the premium class travel to mainland Europe is totally splintered. If there was going to be a fourth European destination after LHR, MAN and FRA, it would probably be Birmingham or Glasgow, as is the case with Emirates and PIA.

But it makes more sense to fly just to LHR than to fly to LHR and MAN and BHX and GLA!

Places which would NOT justify direct flights include Paris, or Rome, or Amsterdam, or Madrid. There is hardly any direct travel to those markets from Australia or NZ because most holiday-makers (who are low-yield passengers anyway) visit multiple destinations, and there aren't enough people travelling in the other direction to justify direct flights.

I hope that NZ develops an Asian hub for through flights from Australia and New Zealand to Europe: I don't care whether its Shanghai or Hong Kong, so long as it's not both.

I suspect that the original poster was hoping we could identify multiple exotic European destinations. In fact, if one of the North Asian cities is built up as a hub for multiple Air NZ flights from multiple Australian and New Zealand cities to connect to multiple European cities, the likely five European destinations under this Emirates-style model would be:

1) London Heathrow
2) Manchester
3) Frankfurt
4) Birmingham
5) Glasgow

It's not that exotic really, is it? And does it add extra value which just LHR flights can't?

And I hate to break bad news, but if you wanted to add the next 5 European international airports in terms of visitors to and from New Zealand, they would probably be:

6) Liverpool
7) Newcastle
8) Edinburgh
9) Bristol
10) Munich

In other words, the ten main viable destinations in Europe for Air NZ comprise of 8 in the UK and 2 in Germany.