I agree with crosscourt regarding the soft product experience with AA lounges (and often on board with them). There are the rare staff gems who make up for it, but in my experience, U.S.-based airlines generally perform poorly in this area. Somehow Qantas does it better in the same location.

I wish Qantas could get SYD-MEX going. There is a huge market for people in Australia going to Mexico and Central America who have zero desire to transit through the USA right now.Even if the route didn't operate every day, I imagine it would see decent demand. A problem would be capacity in MEX ...

Maybe I'm a cretin, but I'd probably take Pommery over Bollinger. Then again, I tend to prefer Tattinger over nearly any other Champagne, which probably marks me as something. Just a personal taste preference, I guess!

I'll definitely be using those extra MEL-DFW flights, and will probably venture onto the A380 on SYD-DFW when that comes online. Still wishing we had gotten that BNE-ORD route that was planned before COVID came along.MEX would also be great, considering the increasing travel between Australi...

Hmm... A route with a stop will always require more time on planes than the non-stop alternative.It's possible that there's a greater probability of experiencing a diversion at some point on two 9-hour flights vs. one 16-hour flight.