Avoiding Heathrow & Gatwick

[kestrelg]

I would like to travel To Australia (probably Sydney) out of Manchester and not get involved with the London airports.
Has anyone any good or bad experiences with the few airlines available.

[Buenchico]

Looking at the list of possible destinations from Manchester
http://www.manchesterairport.co.uk/MANInfo/All Destinations
suggests that the best possible route might be via Singapore. (From personal experience, I can strongly recommend Singapore for a stopover en route to Oz).

Singapore is served by Virgin Atlantic and Singapore Airlines:
http://www.manchesterairport.co.uk/MANInfo/Who FliesHere?DESTIATA=SIN

Both of those airlines fly to Sydney:
http://www.sydneyairport.com.au/SACL/Airlines- International.html

Virgin Atlantic has a 4 star Skytrax rating. There are 468 reviews here:
http://www.airlinequality.com/Forum/vir_atl.ht m

Singapore Airlines is rated as a 5 star airline by Skytrax, with 424 reviews here:
http://www.airlinequality.com/Forum/sia.htm

Chris

[spudqueen]

Last year I flew Finnair from Manchester to Hong Kong. They also fly to Sydney. I really recommend Finnair. We flew to Helsinki first (but because of the curvature of the earth Helsinki to Hong Kong is a really good way to go!). The plane, food and staff were all excellent.

[LCDMAN]

I've flown from Manchester to both Australia and New Zealand with SIngapore AIrlines (via Singapore) and Emirates (via Dubai). Both are excellent airlines and I would have no hesitation in recommending either of them.

I have family in Australia and they have used Quantas and BA to come here in the past, but they were very impressed last time they came over using Singapore Airlines (on my recommendation).