American goes the extra mile. But why?

My wife spent the past few days in Florida visiting family, and was scheduled to return to LAX today, FLL-DFW-LAX. Her itinerary had her on flight 697 from FLL to DFW.

When she got to the airport today, she found that flight 697 had a pretty long mechanical delay. At the Priority AAccess check-in counter, the AAgent immediately rebooked her on a non-stop MIA-LAX flight and arranged to get her on a shuttle (paid for by AA) to MIA. My wife didn't ask for this to happen. She did indeed have to be home in LA tonight (she has to work tomorrow morning), but she didn't even get a chance to tell the AAgent that before she was rebooked. In other words, AA solved the problem before my wife even realized there was a problem.

This was obviously a super nice thing for the AAgent to do. Basically, my wife now has a direct flight home, doesn't have to endure the lay over at DFW, and she arrives a couple hours earlier than scheduled.

But here's my question: Why?

First, her original flight wasn't cancelled. It was just heavily delayed. Yes, it was delayed enough to prevent her from making her originally scheduled connection at DFW. But there are three or four DFW-LAX flights she could have made, and (according to ExpertFlyer) all those flights have available seats on them.

Second, my wife is pretty sure that AA didn't accommodate all the passengers on the delayed FLL-DFW by sending them to Miami. As far as she could tell, the only people given this option were elite and first class passengers.

(For the record, my wife was AAdvantage Gold when we booked her itinerary. Her status expired at the end of February, but her boarding passes still said Priority AAcess on them, and she wasn't charged to check a bag.)

What's more, most people on her shuttle to MIA weren't connecting onward from DFW. So it wasn't like AA was avoiding the hassle and cost of rebooking their connections.

As best I can figure it, the AAgent knew that a planefull of seriously delayed passengers flying into a major hub was about to create a giant IRROPS nightmare, seeing as many of them were going to have to reschedule connections. (And because the delay was a long mechanical, any costs to the airline would be greater, seeing as they might end up having to overnight some people in Dallas.) By getting some customers on MIA flights, she basically limited the number of passengers who would need to be accommodated.

But even then, this seems above-and-beyond for AA. To accommodate passengers on a different flight is nice enough, but to also pay for transportation is icing on the cake. In addition, to provide such a service for passengers who weren't even connecting seems to really be going the extra mile.

Follow Up: Just for fun, I called the EXP line to see if an AAgent could tell me why they were so nice at FLL. She basically said, "Well, if a passenger has to be somewhere at a certain time, we do everything we can to get them there." That's impressive, and certainly inconsistent with the usual stories we hear about airlines, especially legacy carriers. AA could just have soon said, "Sorry. We'll get you out of here as soon as this problem is fixed." Instead, they turned a problem into a win-win. Maybe AA needs to do a better job of getting the message out about situations like this to combat all the negative press they get.