All - we're planning an upcoming business and personal trip to Argentina, and will visit Mendoza after a conference in BA. Internal flight options AEP/EZE - MDZ - AEP/EZE are limited to LAN or Aerolineas Argentinas/Austral. From this thread I see the consensus is to use LAN where available but here's my question: For our return from MDZ to make our international flight out of EZE at 9:20 pm (on United, so different tickets), the LAN options would be either too early or too late. Plus they only fly into AEP, not EZE. If we use the morning LAN flight we'd need to kill about ten hours, some of which would clearly be in the transfer between airports. Aerolineas Argentinas has flights into either AEP or EZE, and has a non-stop flight MDZ-EZE arriving at 5:35 pm (on Austral E-190), which would be just the right amount of time to collect our bags, recheck our bags with United, and hit the lounge before our flight. Lastly, AR offers club economy on the short 1 1/2 hour flights back and forth, which we would prefer for the space, LAN doesn't have an extra space option (we don't have status on OneWorld).

Are we foolish to rely on AR/Austral to get us from MDZ to EZE reasonably on time? Is LAN really that much more reliable that it would be worth sitting in Y for the flight and waiting most of the day for our international flight?

Thanks for any thoughts/opinions!