Flying AKL-LAX (departs at 20:15) in mid December and will arrive in AKL from ZQN on a separate ticket. My normal practice in such a situation would be to play it safe and arrive the night before, but this time I'm contemplating a same day connection of 6 or 8 hours. My thinking is that if the ZQN-AKL flight is more or less on time, we'll head to the Botanic Gardens for a couple of hours. And if the ZQN flight is late, well then we still have a pretty good buffer. As a *G, we'll have lounge access if we need to kill some time in AKL. (And of course, open to other ideas on spending excess time in or near AKL...)

I know everyone's risk tolerance is different, but looking for feedback from those more familiar with the routes and airports involved.