Originally Posted by
italdesign
What do you mean? The long haul segment that I'm booked in J has no J award space for a new booking. The short segment that I'm booked in Y is available in J now. I routinely encounter this situation and call/tweet to change the latter to the J, but obviously the whole itin doesn't show up online for new booking because not all segments have new award space, but that's never been required to make this change. Unless I'm missing something.
As others have pointed out, you're basically looking to rebook your A-B (shorthaul economy) + B-C (longhaul business) ticket to A-B-C (business). That requires business to be available for the whole A-B-C routing. It's not enough to have A-B available in business if there's no business availability for B-C.
In theory you could cancel your current award and hope that B-C becomes available in business, but that's very risky because you don't know when, or even if, B-C becomes available in business.