I hope you can take a step back and see the absurdity of your argument. Using a search engine in one particular way doesn’t imply intent, nor does buying something that’s not exactly what you need.

Airlines can’t have it both ways: if they wanted to, they could make customers pony up a “trajectory abandonment” deposit, or force customers through an interstitial in which they explicitly agree to extra charges, or something similar, but they want the financial/competitive advantage that comes with the customer not having any worries (i.e. being clueless) about being charged for missing or not taking a connection.

We’re talking about a situation in which the customer already knows they want to go to city B. If they’re being truthful up front, city B is the destination they’ll be putting in the destination box when searching for tickets, and they will get a routing to that destination without any additional segments when they do so (assuming, of course, that the route is possible).

Your argument seems absurd to me. The price break exists because it's a good deal for airline and long distance flier. Abusing this system only ends in two ways: airlines punish short-stoppers, or raise prices on everyone.