Sadly I was unable to get a direct flight from SYD-SFO and had to go via LAX. I had high hopes with the opening of the airside tunnel between TBIT and T4, but alas, it has renewed my distaste of LAX.

Transferring from an intl flight from TBIT to T4, it's technically not airside at all. After going through immigration and customs, you drop your bag off, then you are essentially in the 'public' area of the terminal. You have to then join a nice big line to go through security again to get into the connector to T4.

The line was about 200+ people long, only one DHS agent checking tickets/ID's and only 1 scanner running, a real sh*tshow.

Had I set my expectations too high for this connector? I assume it's more suited for the T4 to TBIT flow?

As there was very few people in TBIT at 6:45am, i'm thinking it might have been faster just to exit TBIT and go back through TBIT security again (rather than connector security), then go to the connector.

The only positive part of the LAX experience was being able to shower and get breakfast at the Q F Lounge ^