Thanks for the comments! In the end my distrust of Air China won out and I decided to go with a Cathay flight for $200 more. It was a direct flight going there, through SFO on the way back.

I was shortly considering a delta flight that would have gone HKG-ICN(seoul)-JFK-LAX, in 35 hours, ouch!

The Air China web site still seems weird but at least they fixed the fluke so that you can now actually order the tickets through expedia (instead of the tickets evaporating when you click on them).

Thanks again!