Qantas or EK
 

I'd appreciate some advice please. I am scheduled to fly Dxb to New Zealand (Queenstown) in June returning in July. As a loyal Skywards member i have spent the last 6 years flying with Emirates. With the partnership between Qantas and Emirates now having a green light who am i best to book my flights with as i appreciate that the flight i am on will be the same ?

I am Skywards Silver and was under the impression that Qantas would recognise my Tier status so unless there is a price difference am i correct in thinking that it wont make any difference ?

Thanks in advance.

....duplicate

Benefit of EK , is that it is a single aeroplane service all the way from DXB to AKL whereas with Qantas, you will have to swap in MEL or SYD to a 737 service for the trans tasman service

Nicer trans-tasman aeroplane ( and I prefer EK over QF for the long flight too ) plus no risk of misconnecting in Australia should the flight ex DXB be delayed would make EK a better choice than QF to NZ

If looking at possibility of using a QF codeshare on EK, QF has no codeshare all the way to New Zealand, only to Australia

Thanks for that. My destination will be Queenstown which has a direct flight from Melbourne thus saving me the hassle of going via Auckland of Christchurch.

The flight from Mel to Qtn is provided by Jet Star who are part of the Qantas group so i hoped this would allow me to obtain additional FF miles and perhaps lounge access ?

Jetstar is a low cost carrier and there will be no FF miles earned unless on a flexible fare ( and not sure if you would be able to credit those miles to EK if you wanted to do that )

Qantas does operate a service some days from SYD-ZQN which would be a much more preferable option ( to me ) than a jetstar service out of Melbourne

Allow me to hijack this thread with a couple of observations about flying on a QF codeshare (i.e. EK flight number, QF metal).

I'm doing one of my regular Asian rotations next week and the only flight availability back to London is on the QF009. The Emirates website has been pretty flaky with bookings on busy routes recently, hard to imagine there's no availability whatsoever across a one week window, but that's a different problem.

I like Qantas so am happy to give them a try. The main thing to note is that QF charge all passengers, including 'elites', for exit row seats (at least in economy). AUS$90 for a seat one way. I believe that they also charge all those except Gold and Platinum for any seat selection outside T-24. This is, for me, a big disincentive - on at least half of my EK A380 flights I'm able to get 68A or K, which are my favourite economy seats, without paying.

Getting a non-exit row seat selected was a bit of a faff, the EK agent thought he had to submit a request so I called QF direct (qantas.com didn't work for me, even with the correct QF PNR that you'll get from EK). Eventually I was able to reserve a seat as an EK Gold.

So - exit row seats cost money, and seat selection is a little more difficult, at least until systems are integrated. I also note that buying a seat on a DXB-originating QF flight requires faxing or emailing credit card details, as there are no on-line payment options there yet.

Anything else I should be aware of?

And for Petsar68, enjoy Queenstown, I learned to fly there and ran the bar on Coronet Peak - it's a fun place to spend a few weeks. (Or a couple of years.) (On re-reading your description, I guess you live there so you know that already!)