Originally Posted by
Stranger
Not that it really makes any sense when dealing with awards. More likely, I would guess, that this was set up for some paid fares but somehow it propagated to awards. With paid fares, can serve for gathering extra connection business from outside their regular (taken for granted) catch basin. But awards are just meant to fill empty seats, or to "sell" them to partner airlines, in which case it should make no difference.
At least for married-segment availability, the way another FTer explained it -- and it makes some sense to me -- is that if airlines did not employ such a practice, customers located at or near an airline's hubs could snatch up all low-tier awards on nonstops in and out of the hubs, while freezing out awards for customers (like me) who live in a spoke city and must connect through a hub.