Auckland Trip

[Oliver Gigacz]

I have a lot of Skywards points about to expire and I was wanting to take a day trip to Auckland. I was wondering if this was allowed? (ie: only going for one day)If so I was thinking of taking the early Melbourne to Auckland flight and then take the afternoon Emirates A380 flight to Sydney. This arrives in Sydney at around 20:00.*I then want to take the last Qantas flight back to Melbourne, which leaves Sydney at 22:00. Is a two hour layover long enough to clear customs/transfer? And if there was a delay, is there some type of insurance I can get so that I am guaranteed a bed until the mornings flights?

 

[serfty]

[-]I have had as little as a four hour turnaround at AKL; Two hours should be doable; to be safe it needs to be on the one ticket.

You may even be able to avoid immigration/customs by using the airside transit. However, I have not travelled EK so am not certain about ticketing, check-in etc.[/-]

Answered the wrong question.

At that time of the evening, SYD Customs/immigration is pretty quiet. The Qantas seamless transfer bus leaves on the hour and every 20 minutes. I have connected at this time of night many times. However, the last bus departs at 9pm!

Your main issue is if your inbound is delayed; there's no protection if this happens late enough to miss QF497 which seems to commence boarding ½ hour before scheduled departure time. As for insurance, many don't cover misconnects on separate bookings. Check the PDS's. You may like to self insure by making a flexible booking at a nearby airport hotel - cancel from AKL if your EK flight is on time; or not delayed by more than an hour.

 

[NM]

I have had as little as a four hour turnaround at AKL; Two hours should be doable; to be safe it needs to be on the one ticket.

You may even be able to avoid immigration/customs by using the airside transit. However, I have not travelled EK so am not certain about ticketing, check-in etc.

I believe the question is about a 2-hour transfer in SYD, not an AKL turn-around. As the EK flights will be FF awards, the QF SYD-MEL cannot be on the same ticket. So do note there will be no protection if your AKL-SYD inbound flight is delayed or formalities processing in SYD delays such as you miss the SYD-MEL flight. At that time of night, SYD international arrivals is pretty quiet and transfers generally smooth. I have connected SIN-SYD on QF32 to the last SYD-BNE flight and made the connection easily. But that does not account for a delayed inbound.