Yes, our dream was the gold coast, but there no work there so we are heading either Adelaide or Melbourne for now.

Never flown with any but we are flying with EVA more leg room ut I will let you know how we get on

We've flown Quantas and found them very good in our opinion. Food was excellent, staff very friendly and helpful. All planes have their problems but when you fly cattle class tight leg room etc is to be expected.

From conversations with people i work with who travelled to WA regularly to our Perth office - they found singapore airlines to be the best. In their opinion.

As for extra baggage and one way etc - i'm unsur eon this one myself - going ot be booking ours eventually to get over there - visa granted and has to be validated by 19th November.

Hope this helps

Kind regards

James and Michelle

We flew with Qantas from London to Perth (return journey) in August (premier economy and economy) won't bore you with the details but they were rude, customer service was terrible, inflight entertainment system packed up part way through the flight.

Already had trip booked to return in October so we had to fly with Qantas again, however this time we were in business class and whole experience was alot better. They didn't charge us excess baggage as we were moving to Oz, although we had to get the customer service manager over to the check in desk and she said "as she was in a good mood that day she would waive the excess baggage" (!).

We're flying back to UK for Christmas this year and we won't be flying with Qantas.

Good luck!

We are going Cathay as best rate but also as was brought up in Hong Kong and have links in that area. Haven't flown with them for years and years but sure they will be fine.

Wouldn't choose BA or Qantas from what has been said about flying with small children although my Dad did HKG-LHR on BA business at Xmas and said it was great (and he is a frequent flyer!).

Can't comment on the others....... We flew Singapore when we did our reccie and they were great with the little one.

Whatever you do, don't fly with Bloody Awful. We travelled World Traveller Plus (class above economy but below Business) at a cost of £9800 and it was seriously bad on each of the legs. We flew LHR to Bangkok then onto Sydney and obviously the same on the way back, so it wasn't a one off. We had flown with them twice before and were very disappointed but decided to give them another chance - what a mistake. The staff, with just two exceptions were incredibly rude and basically uncaring of us and our two kids (then 3 and 6 years) and everything was just too much trouble. The entertainment system broke down twice on the long legs for our entire row and the pilot urged us all to complain to BA because 'it was always happening'. The kids slept through some of the mealtimes and they didn't keep any food by (despite promising they would) and just offered biscuits and crisps instead. We're flying with Emirates in July basically from other peoples' recommendations, so hopefully they will be better (difficult not to be!).
Good luck with your flights.
Cheers Lorraine

I know it's not on your list, but I flew Virgin Atlantic to Shanghai recently and was very impressed both with plane, and service. I had a bad experience with Qantas, but that was a long time ago.

Thanks to everyone who has shared their experiences with us, we will not be using bloody awful despite them being the cheapest!! I guess you get what you pay for, but judging by what Lorraine paid that is not always the case!

To be honest I doubt that there is much difference to choose between the lot of them. Every airline on that list will have somebody on here who will say they were great and somebody else will say the same airline was awful.

For what its worth I flew Cath Pac and absolutely nothing stood out about the journey. It was neither good nor bad... it just was.

Really appreciate all the advice people have taken the time to give! We have now booked to go in April with Cathay Pacific! I cannot wait......

I haven't flown with Etihad or Emirates. Qantas & BA treat their economy class customers like dirt but they are good for business and first. We have flown with Cathay a few times in economy and found them to be very good, they have both Asian and European food and like Singapore seem to be genuine in trying to provide good service. When flying to Europe we now pay the extra $450 or so to fly with Singapore, it is well worth it.

You can fly Emirates and get 50Kg baggage each if you book through the MovingPlanet website (www.movingplanet.net). Read the T&C's first though!!

I have just booked for June and for 5 of us 250Kgs is a hell of a lot of baggage!!!!!

Can't comment on Etihad or Cathay Pacific. I'm flying with Emirates in March and I've heard really good things about them.

So that leaves a toss up between BA and Qantas. I've never found anything distinctively good about BA. Not bad but not great.
The scary thing about Qantas is the ancient look of their airplanes - especially when they are parked next to a brand new Malaysian or Singapore airways one.

I suppose though BA has the advantage that oxygen bottles don't pop off mid flight. But then again Qantas staff do seem friendlier and less uppity than those at BA. There seems an air of 'BA are doing us a favour by transporting us somewhere'.

BA/Qantas usually seem to be the cheapest way to get from UK to Australia and since they operate a code share their tickets often cost the same, I've chosen a Qantas plane to avoid BA. I suppose justifying the extra cost of another, better, airline depends on how much you wish to avoid BA/Qantas.

Cant comment on Etihad or CP but will list the ones I have used in order of preference.

1) Singapore - very good service/modern planes/good food
2) Emirates - good service/good food/good entertainment system
3) BA - got us there and back with no problems
4) QANTAS - 24 hour delays/ancient planes/OK food/only use them as we have plenty of FF points.

Booked to go back in Sept/Oct with Emirates and have managed to upgrade 2 of the 6 legs to business.

IMO doesnt make a great deal of difference who you fly with but:

BA seem to have newer planes between LHR & SIN/HKG than Qantas AND you get the benefit of Heathrow T5 which is MUCH better than other terminals.

I only fly Qantas because of the points and will try and use other OneWorld airlines in preference to them anyway. Ultimately however, more important to us than the carrier is the timetable so its a complex algorithm of:

points/total journey time/price/latest possible arrival time (I HATE arriving at 5am!) that usualy determines our choise of airline...