My parents who live in Los Angeles booked business class award tickets to EZE with the return EZE - JFK and now find themselves needing to purchase a separate ticket from JFK to LAX. I have looked at changing the award tickets so that they include a return all the way to LAX but the saver award to any US gateway is no longer available around their planned travel dates and they do not have enough miles to make the change to a standard award ticket.

They do not have GE (and are not planning on getting it) or any status with AA and they will be checking bags. I have one single personal experience on NZ who connected two separate reservations at check in (ADL-AKL to AKL-LAX) so that the bags were checked through to the final destination with boarding passes issued for all flights. Although I am hopeful that AA might be able to do that during the check-in at EZE, I am not counting on that so worst case scenario is immigration, get bags, customs, check in for JFK - LAX, security, to the gate.

EZE-JFK arrives at 7:33 AM and I can find JFK-LAX options at 10:00 AM or noon. The almost 2h 30m connection to the 10:00 AM flight is reasonably above the 1h 45m MCT but I have no sense of JFK immigration, customs, and security lines since I have never traveled through JFK that way. Looking for some feedback from regular JFK travelers as to the relative risk of booking the 10:00 AM flight in this scenario versus having a planned 4h 30m connection by booking the noon flight. Traveling in March and arriving JFK on a Thursday morning if that has any relevance to an answer.

Thanks in advance for any insight.