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Hi I have extensive experience in booking European flights and I have always planned all our holidays, flights accommodations by myself. But for the first time I am going to take our family of four from London to Auckland, New Zealand, and now this is different. There are a variety of questions on the flights I am trying to figure out.

1- how to get an idea about how much a good flight costs? For four, in high season Christmas, I saw quotes ranging from 3,300-3,700£. I have no idea whether these are very high prices or not.

2- how to get an idea about legs’ room - should I stick with some airlines which are notoriously better? Or is it all about the model Of the plane and I would never know till the end?

3- Transit- there are many aspects that worry me but mostly is how to protect us from missing a leg of the flight. Are any transit airports better or notoriously worse than others? Should I keep a good amount of hours in between legs? How many hours is enough and not too many?

4- travel agencies - apart from doing the digging for me, would they offer extra support in case of delays? Would they only book me flights whose luggage is checked through?

5- websites like Expedia, kayak etc do a good job at linking different companies together. I have read other articles in this forum but I still haven’t understood whether they would offer me any guarantee-reimburse-support in terms of ‘luggage checked through’ and delays.

In summary, I am thinking of starting with a kayak website to get some ideas on classic combos-costs, select 3-4 airlines based on their reputation (which I would benefit some help with) and then ring them on specific routes and see what they say. Would you say this is a good approach? Any other suggestions? Things that have worked for you or not worked? Many thanks

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    That’s a lot of questions, you would probably have more success splitting this into several different questions. For question 2, see SeatGuru.com.
    – jcaron
    Jan 12, 2020 at 9:51
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    I did that trip with two children a few years ago. We broke the journey for a couple of days at Singapore, which gave us all a break from the flying. We used an agent who found us good hotels, booked airport transfers and did a few other things for us. It might not have been the cheapest way to do it, but knowing that we had a transfer and a decent hotel arranged at each stop just made life that much easier. A word of warning: we never made it back to Britain. 12 years in Wellington, and loving it!
    – user105640
    Jan 12, 2020 at 10:07
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    What's "best" is entirely subjective, making your question likely to get closed as "opinion-based". However, each of the individual questions here can be answered objectively. I'd thus strongly suggest splitting them up.
    – TooTea
    Jan 12, 2020 at 12:35
  • I would book directly with the airline unless i had used the on-line intermediary several times with good results. Otherwise if anything goes wrong you will be acting at arms- length from the actual supplier.
    – mdewey
    Jan 12, 2020 at 13:45

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