I was able to finally get my flights changed (3 days prior to departure) so I'm in First Class from Seattle all the way to BKK, and no weird overnight layovers.
Originally I was going SEA to LAX Wed. evening, then had a layover until 10AM Thursday morning for Cathay flight to HKG; another few hours layover and then on to BKK to arrive at midnight the 3rd day (Friday evening/Saturday morning) after leaving Seattle.
Now I'm on a Wed. 5:30pm flight to LAX, 10:30pm flight to HKG which arrives 2 days later (Friday) in early AMand then on to BKK to arrive 10:30AM Friday morning.
The route back was equally screwy - late afternoon flight from BKK, late evening flight out of HGK, arrive SFO 10:30pm, spend the night then fly home SFO to Seattle the next day.
Now I'm booked on 10Am flight from HGK to SFO, and 1pm flight the same calendar day to Seattle arriving 4:30pm. Only problem is they didn't have an AM flight to get me to HGK, so I'm going in a day early (arriving at noon) so I can spend the day and an evening in HKG, which I've always wanted to do. Oh, and I had to downgrade to Business to find space on the Cathay flight.
I'm confident if I try again closer to the return date I can get it all tightened up to avoid the HGK overnight if I chose to, and probably back into First Class as well. Lastly, there are earlier flights SFO to SEA but right now they only have coach, I'm pretty confident I can get that changed to First and arrive home closer to 1pm rather than 4:30.
Overall, I'm pleased. But I think I will try to change the Cathay flight back to First Class, and try to get an earlier first class Alaska flight out of SFO to get home.
One thing I noticed is that I had to talk to 2 or 3 different customer service people to find one that could actually see the flights I ended up on. One would tell me "nothing available", then calling back an hour later the next would find availability. I think part of it was the way they searched the Alaska/Cathay system. If they took the lazy route that most of them apparently did, they would just look for "BKK TO SEA" and not look for the hard leg first (HGK to SFO or LAX or YVR) and then put the rest of the pieces together. The only success I finally had was always when the agent would check only for the hard leg first.