Originally Posted by snic

Hmm. I wonder. I thought maybe UA had a momentary cash flow problem and wanted to spur a lot of TPAC fare purchases, a lot of which might end up in H or higher fare classes. But that doesn't explain the increased award seat availability. Maybe, for accounting reasons, they wanted to reduce the number of miles on the books? One way to do that would be to make it very convenient to book award tickets, and then slam the door shut as soon as the target number of miles has been redeemed.

Who knows.