Originally Posted by MSPeconomist

If one of the sons (presumably the 19 y.o.) had a credit card in his own name with sufficient available credit, shouldn't the GA have simply taken the card and charged the tickets to one of the traveler's card rather than to the mother's card. Isn't that what happened the next day. [OTOH I think someone said that mother paid for the hotel night, so maybe there wasn't an available credit card with the kids.]

I also noticed that they were returning to LAX after spending a weekend visiting mother in Canada, so it seems strange that they would be traveling on purchased one way tickets instead of using the return portion of a RT. Yes, they might have used one way award tickets in the other direction, or they might have purchased coach RT tickets, but when mother was so happy about the visit, she offered to buy them business class tickets for the return flights and let them discard the remaining portion of their RT tickets in coach, etc., but IMO these scenarios are rather unlikely.