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NY->Melbourne would be fantastic. Right now the flight there is a 24+ hour trip with at least one layover in HK or LA/SF.

What I noticed is after about 3 or 4 hours (for me), I decompress and start feeling like a child on a road trip again. Time is kinda of just going by, you distract yourself. They serve food at good intervals and you eventually get of the plane.

To say the California->Australia part is actually not as annoying as the domestic short haul flights from NY->LA which is like being jam packed like a sardine with few amenities. International, even in the cheap section, was comfy enough and I even had leg room!

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For anyone doing US <-> Australia flights, and assuming you have a few extra days up your sleeve, look in to doing a stop over in Honolulu.

On four separate occasions i've stopped in HNL for 2 or 3 nights for little (less than $150) to no additional cost to the airfare (you have to sort out your own hotel and food, obviously), and what there's no better place to spend a few days killing time and smoothing out the jet lag.

Australia to Europe is roughly 21 hours total flight time. Even using Business Class, the long-leg Melbourne-Dubai is about 14 hours and not pleasant.

We took to breaking the whole trip into three 7-hour parts, Melbourne-Singapore with 2-3 nights stopover, then Singapore-Dubai with another 2-3 nights stopover, and then the final 7-hour leg Dubai-Paris.

This gave sufficient recovery-time between flights for us poor old 70-year-olds and had the benefit of breaking the 9-hour time-zone difference into three smaller jumps that reduced jet-lag quite markedly.

Seconded!

Breaking the Dubai leg with a Singapore stopover is awesome. Singaporean food markets are an experience not to be missed. Now I am addicted to rose cordial!

> assuming you have a few extra days up your sleeve

Ha! If I had a few extra days up my sleeve, I wouldn't be flying to Australia in the first place!