Originally Posted by
andrewwm
Oh, I completely forgot that XMN has a fair amount of international service. Not sure if the flight times would work, but ANA has flights from XMN to NRT, from which you could do ANA in C to SFO or Singapore Airlines to LAX (I'm assuming OP's destination is SAN).
Other reasonable international options from XMN are Osaka or Seoul, both of which will provide onward options on Star Alliance flights to SFO.
Last month I flew from XMN to HKG on Dragon Air, stayed overnight and flew out the next day on UA. If you have never been to HKG it is nice to see. Granted no UA miles for the XMN-HKG part but it is really not that long of a flight. You can then hook up with the new config for the flight back.