My partner called web support twice - they claimed they couldn't ticket the K class Swiss segment.

Yea our loss with giving up on that itinerary - I understand that - in the end neither of us could get anywhere with United. I guess we needed to find and hire a professional "argue with United on the phone" person.

Hopefully we'll have a good experience with LX - we did bid on their upgrade auction. :-)

I have to edit this post for a clarification: I was just talking again to my partner, who did the most of the calling, since I was unable to spend much time on the phone that night. When he talked to web support, they did reconstruct the itinerary, but said the K class Swiss segment would not ticket and advised him to wait 24 hours. My partner expressed skepticism that it would ticket and declined to pursue it any further. Web support said there was nothing else they could do. I wasn't aware of this detail, so oh well! But in any case, it's frustrating to have to go through this kind of hassle to book a ticket on United!