My flights to Australia

Last night I bit the bullet and bought the flights for our March, 2018, Celebrity Solstice sailing from Fremantle to Sydney, via NZ. I ended up buying it from Qantas because that way I can fly on AA from Baltimore to DFW and then on Qantas to Oz.

I also weighed the option of flying through Dubai. Unfortunately, it would have required us to get to IAD in the middle of rush hours, a no-no for Washington.

I was lucky to upgrade to one great seat on each leg -- nothing in front of it. However, the adjoining seat (for my wife who is one slender and small woman?) has standard legroom. Either one sitting in the latter should be able to stretch legs to the free space.

I got what I thought is an excellent price (roughly $1,550 each) on an itinerary that does not involve any long transfers on the way Down Under, but about five ours on return in DFW. Since we need to go through immigration and customs there, that will eat some of that time.

I don't know about DFW specificly I know that anytime you fly into on an international flight and transfer to a domestic flight you you have to clear customs and immigration and then re-check your bags, really just drop them back off with an AA rep in your case and then get re-screen by TSA before you go back into the secure gate area where you will find food etc. 5 hours should give you more than enough time, even in DFW. If you do not have it yet, invest the $100 each in Global Entry. It has saved us hours on our recent trips and it gets you TSA Pre Check 99.9% of the time too.