Then, Expert Flyer illustrates the restriction perfectly. Each nonstop flight shows award availability for the max 7 seats. Yet, when the desired connection is viewed in American's system, the award seats on both segments vanish. Availability drops to T0.
It makes no sense to me to call this restriction (the inability to sew together two nonstop award flights that meet all of American's connection protocols) a "Married Segments" restriction. Every definition I've seen of Married Segments indicates that availability for a PAIR of flights is restricted to that origin and destination, and only tickets to that origin and destination can be issued under the award seats made available under that married segments restriction. Looking at each segment, separately, shows no availability.
Married Segment requires two flights to make the marriage.
It appears that American, at or near the same time as increasing their Married Segment availability last year, also placed new restrictions on award seats to nonstop destinations that began to disallow those same award seats from being pieced together in a multi-segment itinerary. I was told on the phone this new process is a Through Award Fare restriction. Nonstop flight award seats can no longer be stitched together to make a single award ticket unless revenue management specifically issues a Through Award Fare in the fare management system for the combination of flights.
Sure, I guess we all can just call this another application of "Married Segment" logic. If that's the case, the Wiki should be updated to make it clear that Married Segment restrictions don't just prevent us from booking individual segments seen in a multi-segment award, but that the reverse is also true: We can no longer find award seats on preferred nonstop flights and then piece them together to come up with a valid multi-segment award ticket. (I still stand by my point that American sees these a two different, albeit complimentary, restrictions.)
This much is clear. There are two distinct restrictions in play:
1.) An award seat that is made available as part of a pair of Married Segments cannot be booked for each segment separately/individually.
2.) An award seat that is made available individually (for a nonstop flight) cannot be booked together with another award seat that is made available individually (for a nonstop flight) unless revenue mgmt has specifically issued Married Segment (or Through Award Fare) availability for the combined pair of segments.