Originally Posted by
wrp96
The other thing to remember is it's always best to keep moving forward. If you have an issue, you'd rather have the full 9 hours to find a way to get to LAX to catch that flight to Auckland, rather than leaving yourself only 2 hours to fix an issue because your flight from IAH developed a problem on takeoff.
While a good point, if all of the segments are on one ticket, it might not be a huge deal to stay overnight in LA. This depends on other factors, however (such as trip length, any trip insurance purchased or provided by credit cards, etc.)