I wanted to get the brain trust's opinion on something. I'm pretty sure I can't do what I would like with this reservation, but open to creative ideas...

I am flying AAA-BBB-CCC with AAA-BBB being an international segment and BBB-CCC domestic US.

• When I search for AAA-BBB alone, I see IN availability (and the saver award pricing)
• When I search for BBB-CCC alone, I see XN availability only on later flights that would have a long connection. I don't see XN available on the flight that I want
• When I search for AAA-CCC, I see IN availability on AAA-BBB and XN showing for the later BBB-CCC connections (but not the ones I want) pricing at the saver business price. For the connections I want, it shows JN on both segments at the everyday award price.
• When I look at economy award pricing for AAA-CCC, I see XN availability on AAA-BBB and the BBB-CCC flight I want if I book a sever economy ticket the entire way. It's this last point that is a bit perplexing to me.

Does this all make sense? I'm ultimately looking to book IN and AAA-BBB and XN on the BBB-CCC connection that I would like. But it looks like UA is only showing XN on the connection I want if I book the entire flight in economy saver.

I'm wondering if there is any way I can get this to work. One thought I had was to book AAA-BBB-CCC all in XN at the saver economy price and then call to try to switch the AAA-BBB segment to IN and pay the mileage difference to saver business. But I expect that they would need to reprice the whole journey and XN would need to show available for the connection. Is that right?

Any other options?