i only used import with visual scripting. I used datamsith after interchange didnt work out of the box but now only interchange.
Yes Pipline didnt work for me either in 5.2 but in 5.4 it should. I am currentlich on 5.3 but have no interest in testing it out at the moment.
I had occasional crashes with datasmith as well with interchange.
gltf imports, that got less frequent crashes with some Handmade waiting time Arround one Loading cycle (severalseconds) . But async Loading is to cool to have, so I tried further out, and the trick for me was that each import scene node call gets its own content path.
Since I only use it on single parts and only one time I can’t tell the difference to your situation. By the way i use .glb files und u .datasmith thats maybe also a difference.