Flight lands in LAX at 6am, flight to Japan at 9am

If it's two legs of the same flight, no need to do any of that, except disembark and find your gate.

You'll show your passport at your first airport, then maybe again right before you get on the plane.

Should be plenty IF your flight is on time. I've got a similar situation in March - a flight out of LAX to Auckland . My choice was to give myself 6 hours and two backup flights possible since it's late in the day and not hard to do. I'm F'd if I miss my outward flight.

And I'll buy lounge access. Looking forward to trying the Sky Couch on Air New Zealand. Less than half the cost of Business, and more lay flat area.

You should be OK, though. Minimum allowable connection time for check in is 1 hour and that gives you an hour of safety margin. But be prepared that you may have to change terminals and look at how that works. It was very strange when connecting to Australia through LAX last year, and that was a continuous flight on Delta. So you don't necessarily have a lot of free time.

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Three hours? You serious Clark?

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That’s three hours from landing to take off. Subtract an hour to disembark, get luggage, check in. Now you have to go through security (an hour?). That leaves 30 minutes to find your gate, because the start loading 30 mins out.

Why will you have to go through security again?

Is she going by herself? If she if don’t be cheap and get her the most convenient pathing.

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if she buys round trip tickets from NO to LAX with JetBlue

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What is her routing from Msy to lax on JetBlue? Because there’s no good way to get there since they only fly to Boston, New York, and Ft. Lauderdale from Msy.

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Why will you have to go through security again?

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That's what I was wondering. Domestic flights don't need to clear security a second time before jumping on an international flight.

She will not be getting her bags, or going through security again in LAX if starting in MSY. I just did IAH-LAX-MEL and had 50 minutes between landing and departure and made it fine.

Now, on the *return* I would probably accept nothing shorter than 2-3 hours in SFO or LAX. Depending on when the plane lands, staffing may not be... uh... optimal. Have her download the TSA Mobile Passport Control app on the way back so she can use a much shorter line for free. I stopped using it in 2019 because I could use CLEAR to transit security when coming back from overseas faster when I wasn't flying direct.

We were all wrong on luggage bros, and I'm about to explain why. She will have to recheck domestically.

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I looked, it had her going all over the US to get to LAX from NO. I told her she just needs to book from NO to Japan

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I just looked up one Jetblue how she was getting there. She's using a third party booking site (like Kayak) to do this. Please tell her not to; it will only result in pain. If she thinks it's a good idea to walk up to the Spirit and ZipAir desks and ask for help when things go sideways, she should totally book the cheapest itinerary to get there like she wants to.

I don't know the dates she's traveling, but it appears to be non interlined airlines (Interline means they transfer luggage automatically as long as you don't need to clear customs on the way out.)

The itinerary I'm pretty sure she's looking at is this:
26 hours out, 24 hours back.
Spirit from MSY to LAS, with a 6.5 hour layover, landing at 1130PM.
Spirit from LAS to LAX at 6AM.
ZIPAIR from LAX to NRT, after a 2.5h layover.

Return is similar, only the layover in LAX is almost 11 hours., where they have to retrieve luggage (which they would have had to do anyway, but in LAX, you have to walk over a half a mile ground side to re-check luggage, which blows.)

This is a bad, bad, bad idea. If you want my help booking her a ticket that won't have her calling you crying in the middle of the night let me know. I thought the guy buying basic economy to fly to Europe was bad, but this is f@*cked.

It's 12.5 hours from IAH to NRT direct depending on the winds. About 11.75 on the way back, and there are plenty of flights to/from MSY to IAH each day. 15 hours of travel at reasonable times, or *26* hours. If she's flying to Tokyo, the $500 in fare difference shouldn't be a factor. It's worth it, 100%.

Yes, more than enough time. I've done it several times when going to Australia and every time I switched airlines between the domestic route and international.

Unless something has changed post 2019 then you do have to get your luggage, check in with the international carrier and go through security.

As stated, you have plenty of time to do all of that.

It would help if you gave dates.