I've actually had this done before a couple of times. It's a forced request but not how one would think. Let's say LH123 shows F9 but 0 award seats.
I call agent, agent tells me there's no award seats in F. I ask her if she could put in a request, or "push" the request for an F award. She sends a request to LH and within 3-5 min she gets back a yes or no.
I had it done several times with LH, SQ and recently when I wanted to use miles on Air China for a C Class seat PEK-ULN. She sent the request and it came back open...on both legs, which showed closed on computer! She didn't open a seat, she just sent a request to the airline and the airline either approved it or updated it.
Now whether the individual airlines look at the inventory and decides to open a seat or it just needed to be updated, I don't know. I assumed the former. That someone received the request at say, LH, looked at the flight and decided to open a seat and approve the request.
Am I correct, Monsieur LufthansaFlyer?
UG