I'm looking at a similar situation that I just am not able to get "reasonable" pricing for PE when booking with CX, AA or JL directly.

I need to go from SFO to ICN for 2 weeks, then I need to go to HKG for a week before returning to SFO this Nov/Dec time frame (no exact dates just yet but trying to avoid missing the USA holidays too).

The closest and not complete trip is on CX, as I've done it before and "dreaded the notion of flying "pass" Seoul to land in HKG, wait a couple hours and fly three hours back to the Korean peninsula. I was hoping to fly to Japan then over to Korea then down to Hong Kong on nonstop flights.

The work around I'm looking at is to get JAL roundtrip from SFO to Seoul. Then use a separate ticket for a round trip from Seoul to Hong Kong. Too bad it appears that I'd have to change airports (GMP to ICN) to make this work on OW. Ugh!!

Any other suggestions any one can think of would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks