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> Carriers argue this practice prevents them from selling seats on the abandoned leg of the journey, leading to lost revenue.

Maybe they could do this with... pricing. Like charge LESS for one leg, instead of more for both legs.

And would they complain if the customer didn't show up for the entire flight?

This seems more like "protect my crazy business model"

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But they've already sold the seat on the abandoned leg of the journey, haven't they? What difference would it make if someone sits in that seat or not?

The difference is before all that. They don't want to sell that cheaper ticket in the first place to someone who would otherwise pay for a much more expensive ticket to the first destination.

I thought about it in another comment, and it doesn't seem that crazy. Properly factoring the opportunity cost of the first leg into the connecting flight price would be complicated and might give worse results.

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