I've got to go to HAK from SEA, and am having a hard time figuring out a reasonable *A routing. My problem is that I can't leave until 2pm on Wednesday, and I'd like to arrive as early as possible on Friday.

.bomb offers a connection on the late-departing SFO-CTU, but with a 14 hour layover between the 6am Friday landing and an 8pm Air China connection. This seems to waste more of the day than necessary. There are mid-morning departures on Lucky Air and Sichuan, but UA doesn't seem to ticket with them (google flights won't generate an itinerary). I'm considering just ticketing them separately (I know...), but is 2.5-3 hours at CTU a reasonable connection?

Thoughts or suggestions? Thanks in advance.

Edit: This is in Y, BTW. As much E+ as possible would be great.