Originally Posted by
mvoight
But, I don't see how this is a trip in vain, as the outbound segment did not stop the OP from using the return as he still went to his event
I believe
ijgordon's point is that OP bought a
one-way ticket (more accurately, 2, including his wife) for ATL-SFO, not a roundtrip ATL-SFO-ATL. Because of that, the fact that OP successfully traveled SFO-ATL doesn't have any bearing on the ATL-SFO ticket.