Ohhhhhhhhh yes, LOVE the air-to-air J+LP. I’ve found that adjusting timing, and when precisely in the jump arc you connect the hit, can influence (no pun intended) whether or not you will cross up. Also, if you do the command grab input in the air at a point where the opponent has technically crossed your center-line, you’ll do a ORZ when you land as opposed to a command grab - which is kind of neat if you’ve hit your opponent with the J+LP > Influence once already, since they’ll get an attack to the face when they expect the throw.
I have to play around with it more, but thus far I feel pretty much the same way. It allows us to do some hard-to-break stuff in instinct which is cool, but we had similar things already due to perma-counter-hits while in instinct. Standing HK (the far version) is a good thing to fish for - it allows plenty of time to dash up for a mixup (I personally like dash > LP+LK throw > reset into Influence to avoid scaling and get the knockdown.
Based on my initial testing this week though, it seems like Flip-Out is WAY more useful than stagger. I’m excited to share that tech with everyone, can’t wait to get home from work and start throwing that footage together!!