Originally Posted by
TWA884
LAX is my home airport, so I have never connected there. I have Global Entry, which includes PreCheck, so my personal experience of going through passport controls and immigration, and TSA security are likely to be different than what you will experience.
With that in mind, let me point out the following:
It can easily take 20 minutes or longer to get from T4 or T5 to the remote Eagle terminal - I have done that more than once - so that evens out the two options.
Walking between adjacent LAX terminals takes between three and five minutes, so figure on 6-10 minutes longer to walk from TBIT to T6 than to T4.
Will you have checked bags? Those can take a long time to start showing up on the baggage carousels at TBIT. I rarely, if ever, travel with checked bags, however, from what I have heard, it can take as long as 40 minutes or even longer. Yes, the carousels are located after passport controls, so some of the wait will be spent while in the immigration line; however, after collecting your luggage, you will still have to pass by and possibly chat with the CBP officers who staff the exit from the Federal Inspection Service facility.
If I were in your situation, I'd opt for the AS flight with a two-hour connection; I think that you'll get to the T6 gate sooner than to the remote terminal gate and you'll have a backup flight leaving from the same terminal.
I second this, though I'm a bit biased as primarily an AS flyer. If there are more AS flights later they'll be easy to switch to as long as there are seats. I think the same day change fee for intra CA flights without AS status is still only $25. You might lose the J seat if you have to switch, but it's such a short flight it doesn't matter much. The last flight of the day tends to be least full and sometimes seems like it's just a shuttle full of airline crews (multiple airlines). I've only made connections at LAX a few times, and it's been when I was on multiple itineraries where it wasn't worth the trouble of trying to go home between the end of one and start of the next.
Eagles nest kinda sucks, and has the added time of getting shuttled there. If you look at the AA/AS strategies, AA is reducing intra-CA and regional flights in favor of steering people to AS, while AS is very competitive in the west and uses AA and international parters as feeders. The nest is scheduled to shut down next year to make space for T9, so is probably getting slowly worse.
If you don't have Precheck or Clear, T6 security will probably be faster than T4 or T5 (you can go through any). T6 load drops so much in the early evening that CLEAR closes by 8, and around that time Pre is sometimes mixed into the regular line and run as pre-light. The longest it's taken after 8 pm is about 10 minutes (before 8 I can get from the curb to airside in 5). I'd also check the line at TBIT though -it may be even faster, though I've only gone through the CLEAR/Pre line there and it's always been zero wait. The interactive map (
here) is actually pretty reasonable at time estimates, and if you're a fast walker you can treat it as an upper limit. The airside hike from B to T6 is a little convoluted (changing levels multiple times) and can be longer than the landside hike, depending on what gate you're going to, but is very doable.