MQuinn, when passengers purchase a ticket on an airline, it's a contract from (in your daughter's case) Vancouver to Monterrey. San Francisco is a necessary point in the itinerary, but in no way has to do with the origin or destination of the ticket. When a passenger forgoes a leg of their journey, the rest of the itinerary is automatically cancelled, usually by a computer program that runs through all the no-show names on a flight. Here is the airline's logic in this situation (i'm making up prices just to get the point across, so please work with me):
You go to book airline tickets for your trip from Vancouver to Monterrey round-trip. These are the lowest fares you find:
Vancouver to Monterrey round-trip is $500 on your travel dates
Vancouver to Monterrey one-way is $650 on your departure date
Monterrey to Vancouver one-way is $700 on your return date
You're gonna book the round-trip, cause its way cheaper....$500 vs.$1350
Now, say, you
really want to go from Vancouver to San Fran, meet some friends, roadtrip to Monterrey, then come back to Vancouver from Monterrey. You do some digging on the internet. This is what you find:
Vancouver to San Francisco one-way is $800 on your departure date
Monterrey to Vancouver one-way is $700 on your return date
BUT...
Vancouver to Monterrey round-trip is only $500, AND the connection happens to be in San Fran! Why not just buy the $500 round-trip, and just not fly the San Fran to Monterrey portion. It'd save you $1000 ($500 vs. $1500), right?
Wrong. The airlines know that things like this are done, and to prevent it, they cancel your itinerary when you don't show for the San Fran-Monterrey portion. They have a business to run, and are going to make sure that they are not taken advantage of. So, when you skip that one little flight, they cancel your itinerary. They want to be able to sell as many seats as they can, so they free up the space that you were taking and sell it to someone else. You can't use it after all, because the "low" fare of $500 that you and the airline agreed upom is no longer what you traveled. You really traveled the $800 trip from Vancouver to San Fran. And they certainly aren't going to keep your booked low fare, and price out what is left, which would be the $700 from above. Why would they do that when they think you were trying to pull one over on them (which you, kinda, were.)
So, that is the logic in canceling itineraries of people who don't travel a portion of their flight. I know that your daughter did not
intentionally skip out on the San Fran to Monterrey flight (or roadtrip or anything like that), but cancelling the itinerary is something that is programmed to happen. If the agents knew her situation and still directed her to the bus as a means of transportation to Monterrey, then they probably should have mentioned it. If she just asked someone the best way to get to Monterrey, without explaining that she was in the middle of travel, then the agents don't know to advise her of the policy. Either way, it's unfortunate that the policy wasn't understood.
Side note:
The airlines have different prices for different city pairs. It may seem silly that a flight from Detroit to Indy might cost you $250, when a flight from Detroit to Los Angeles is only $200, right? Especially considering LA is so much farther than Indy from Detroit. BUT, the marketing people for the airlines have some crazy way to figure out what will (hopefully) make them money as opposed to lose money. I, unfortunately, have no idea how this works. I wish I did.
I know it is a long explanation, and kind of confusing, but I tried to explain it the best i could. It should be clear as mud, right
? I know that it doesn't change what happened, but maybe understanding why it was done might make it a bit easier to deal with. I hope it helped.