Air New Zealand vs. Qantas

All other things being equal (price, time, route) which would you prefer to fly?

No it shouldn't. The 'customer' from hell should get the bare minimum or less. Normal/'nice' customers should get more. Sadly enough, in reality it is sometimes the reverse, because staff is 'afraid' of TCFH.
Been there, done that, got the T-shirt (both ways).

Frank "Who has been in customer service all of his working life." Slootweg

Who is she?

ANZ's been around since 1939, originally called T.E.A.L. (Tasman Empire
Airways Limited) until 1965.

Qantas [because it's a partner airline to Continental and I can gain miles on my frequent flier membership.]

I can't compare, but we are very satisfied with Qantas, both on 'short' domestic trips and on three long-hauls from London to Oz and vice versa. If it helps, we prefer them (a lot) over British Airways.
What we especially appreciate is being waited on by real people instead of robots. Other features have been mentioned elsewhere (LCD screens, snack/water bag, toothbrush/eye-pads, etc.).

A guy sitting at an airport bar in New York, noticed a beautiful woman sitting next to him.

He thought to himself, "Wow, she's so gorgeous she must be a flight attendant. But which airline does she work for?"

Hoping to gain her attention, he leaned towards her and uttered the Delta
Slogan, "Love to fly and it shows?". She gave him a blank, confused stare, and he immediately thought to himself, "Nope, not Delta.".

A moment later, another slogan popped into his head. He leaned toward her again, "Something special in the air?". She gave him the same confused look. He mentally kicked himself, and scratched American Airlines off the list.

Next he tried the United slogan, "I would really love to fly your friendly skies?". This time the woman savagely turned on him, "What the hell do you want?"

The man smiled, then slumped back in his chair, and said.... "Ahhh

And this makes sense.
Cargo makes more $$ for the airline than passengers.

Must have been a real cheap fare basis ticket if you could not be moved over to another airline.

A ticket *does not automatically* guarantee you to be moved to another airline.

A ticket is a contract to get you from point a to point b.
They can put you on a slow boat and as long as it got you there, they have fulfilled their part of the contract.

Out of curiosity, do you carry travel insurance?

How did they get it off the golf course and back to the airport?

It would depend on what class of travel and which aircraft was being used. I would easily choose a QF 744 over a NZ767 since the Qantas flight would have a decent in flight entertainment system for example

Thanks for cutting put all of useless cross posts and well spoken.

People should remember that it is Economy Class and, despite the advertising agencies, you shouldn't expect too much.

These days I have no choice but to travel in Business (such has been the decline in both me and Economy in 30 years) and even there Qantas has delivered one of my worse and nearly one of my best journeys ever , both
Trans Tasman. My best journeys have been SQ between SIN and SYD - mainly sitting on the main deck in J on 7474s, with the great bulk of the other J passengers in the bubble and me being left with about 4 cabin crew to look after me - including a good long chat with a real delightful SQ cutie!

BUT, one of the main reasons for poor service delivery does seem to be the senior person on the cabin crew. The good QF flight I mentioned above had a really good purser who, apart from doing his own duties, keep a very close eye on service delivery and keep asking the passengers how things were. The bad trip had a purser who hid most of time to do her duties and let the rest of the crew run their own race.

BTW - one of my clients (a pretty demanding US medical specialist/teacher who now resides in Australia) said that on long haul on the Kangaroo route in J during the night on QF, she wanted some fruit juice, got no response to the call button and wandered down to the galley - which was unattended.
While looking around she spotted the juice and a glass and proceeded to help herself - at this stage one of the hosties arrived and abused her! I understand that the scene that followed was not nice!

I hear ya. Flying Garuda domestic is like taking a trip back in time. Color
TV wasn't invented at the time my plane was built.

It should be if it's in the public good.

Which would seem to open up possibilities for the longest golf shot ever. I mean if some one sliced over the runway just as something was taking off ......

And more to the point, ANZ would not have been in the market for Ansett, had the Aus govt not reneged on the "Open Skies" agreement.

Currently we have Qantas and other Aus airlines who can and do enter our domestic market at will while NZ carriers are shut out of Australia's, which unfortunately has become quite typical of the way Australia does business with nZ

I take it then that it was a thru ticket i.e. all your flights were on the one ticket and not on two or more?

What was the reason/s NZ said they could not move you to another airline?

People don't realise that even a code share ticket can cause problems if your book on say airline a from point a to point b and airline b from point b back to point a. You should have all your flights ticketed with airline a.

Full Y usually does not get you anything *unless* you have a high status ff membership.
The only time it has gotten me anything was on a co-partner's flight when space a allowed an upgrade to first class.

Re-routing - what would have been the delay in waiting for another
SIN-AMS routing as per your ticket?

Did you write to NZ after the trip and complain - if not, why not?

But with the amount of miles you state you travel, you should be very aware that problems do occur.

In Sept we go Osaka, Frankfurt Vienna London HK, Akld; landing/departure & other fees, unheard of 20 years ago are now a whopping $600 NZ

Sorta militates against going too often, but I guess the Europeans and others could care less about encouraging tourism these days. Bit like paying entrance fees to the local mall really.