<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by thadocta:
Airline staff can bring up exact availability on their screens for their own flights, but only get 9/7/4 (depending on which system is in use) for other carriers flights.
Dave</font>
I had this exact case when requesting 7 x econony award tix on a QF partner airline (several actuallty). On one airline that shows 7 as max availability, I was able to book 7xX class (systems showed 7 available seats) and immediately there were more seats still available. So the limit was showing 7, but was actually more than 7 seats available.