All airlines have flights that get delayed; Emirates is no worse than any other

There was no missed connection as far as it relates to Emirates. Emirates delivered the passengers to the destination which it had been paid to do so. 1 hr 45 minute delay, although annoying to have , is not major

The flight was 2 hours late leaving Dubai and arrived 1:45 late into Auckland. Nothing that would be a shock with any airline

Delays happen evey day on evey airline it is certainly not a ek specific problem, however when most people are transiting through a hub ie dxb then the impact is greater.

Ek do overbook y and j hence why they are very successful at filling planes. There are not too many occasions where pax are offloaded and there are often a queue of volunteers when they do, due to the generous free flight they offer along with hotel etc.

I'd be surprised if many insurance policies would pay out for the OP's scenario. Any missed connection clause I've ever looked at has typically required at least 4 hours between scheduled arrival and departure. If someone wants to be covered for a smaller gap then expect to pay a lot more.

Thanks to everyone who responded to my message. But I would just like to clarify a few things: Firstly, Emirates do not fly to Dunedin and that was confirmed by Emirates when I booked the flights so there was no choice but to book direct with Air New Zealand ourselves. Had we deliberately not booked a connection with Emirates then obviously we'd have to accept the consequences, but at no stage was this offered. Most airlines consider 1.5 hrs a minimum for changing flights - we had 2hrs so had we landed on time we would have had no problem. We do have full travel insurance cover, however, it does not cover the sort of amounts we're talking about. Last but not least, neither my husband or myself are aggressive people, perhaps if we were we'd get results, but we're not, and we were not aggressive to the desk clerk, why would we be it wasn't her fault, but she was representing Emirates and so some TLC and a bit of sympathy wouldn't have gone a miss. Also, of course, hindsight is a great thing to have.

This was a very very high risk strategy, 3 flights to the other side of the planet with a 2 hour connection to a different Airline. What could go wrong?

Air NZ has a min check in time of 30 mins which affectively gave you a 90 min connection. That would be 90 mins to get off the plane clear security, collect your baggage and then walk 10 mins to the domestic terminal and then present yourself at the Air NZ Domestic Desk.

"Anyone have any thoughts on my problem with Emirates" your problem is not with Emirates.

Put it down to experience, next time book the whole ticket with Air NZ or buy a flexible domestic ticket.

I think by now you probably have a good idea of the level of your naïveté. In future I would suggest using a TA to arrange your travel.

Agree with blagger, most insurance policies, if not all, that I have seen has a condition that flights should have a minimum of 4 hours connecting time when changing flights. If you are changing between flights of the same carrier then 2 hours is appropriate. If changing to another airline then 4 hours would be minimum I think. Bad luck to the OP, hopefully you can claim some back via your insurance.

Not of any help to the OP but in fact it is possible to book flights from the UK to Dunedin through EK.com. You need to show results by price rather than schedule but there a number of alternatives offered. These all seem to route through Christchurch rather than Auckland and connect to Mt Cook Airlines (an ANZ subsidiary).
It does not however appear possible to book most NZ domestic connections using Jetstar - even if shown as options the website does not give you a price and most domestic NZ Jetstar flights are excluded in the fare conditions for ex UK international trips (which seems daft).

Actually there are policies that covers ANY delays, however these mostly apply to frequent flyers who purchased year round coverage.

I forgot about the short connection (even more so to book a next day flight), which I agree that for spot insurance it's almost unheard of for compensation of less then 4 hours.

As OP said hind sight is always 20/20, and it does offer good lessons which can be painful sometimes.

Indeed, although when I just tried it, it connected me via AKL.

I find that the results I get from trying to book multi-city trips in Aus / NZ seem to change every time I try. In particular results can vary if you break the trip down into a multicity booking with same day connections e.g. LHR-CHC leaving LHR in the evening always gives you the 777 via BKK and SYD whereas LHR-DXB-CHC gives you the option of the direct A380 to SYD.

The fact that EK does not serve Dunedin does not mean that OP could not have purchased a ticket across multiple carriers to Dunedin. He would then have been connecting and, had he misconnected, he would have been accomodated. But, OP chose to buy two separate tickets. He failed to show up for his second ticket, so it was cancelled. That is what happens.

It is a common misunderstanding that the Minimum Connect Time (MCT) has some magical meaning on separate tickets. It does not. MCT is simply the lease amount of time for which carriers are willing to accept the risk of a misconnect. It has no application here.

Neither EK nor NZ will cover this and OP states that his insurance won't cover. So, he is out the money and that will be the end of it.

If he wishes, he may try sending a short (3-4 sentences) and carefully worded note to NZ, stating that he made the mistake of booking separate tickets and asking that NZ issue a credit of some kind as a customer service gesture. But, OP isn't entitled to anything, so this is an "ask".

Of the many contributions to the thread, the above words strike me as the most succinct & relevant.

Whilst sympathetic to anyone whose travel plans get messed up, I simply cannot see how '20/20 hindsight' could ever be invoked as some sort of mitigating factor. Anyone would know right from the start that this was a huge gamble ; and it is most unfair IMO to quote EK advertising straplines with the implication that they have some sort of obligation in respect of separately-booked onward flights with inappropriately tight connecting times.

If all goes well, I can get to LHR from my home in around 45 mins. But knowing the potential for things NOT going well, I never allow less than three times that long for the trip........

Obviously there are many trip insurance companies out there, but I buy about 2 policies a year and they have never requried any minimum time between connecting flights to be booked, in order to be covered. None are premium plans or anything like that (~$200 and under for 3 people). There is always a minimum delay time (in reaching the final destination) for coverage to kick in - may latest policy uses 5 hours for example.

In any case since the OP's policy has denied their claim I agree with the others, nothing else can be done, just a lesson learned for the future I suppose.

As I mentioned in post #8, you can get an HFL add-on which is combinable with EK/NZ. In fact, looking at itineraries through emirates.com and comparing them with the GDS, the itineraries are quoting BHX EK x/DXB EK x/SYD EK x/CHC NZ DUD (HFL). These itineraries are all on one ticket so should SYD-CHC cause a misconnect, EK would be responsible.

As OP was traveling via AKL, any travel agent (or even the EK call centre) should have been able to manually create the itinerary.