Last May, coming from Guayaquil, Ecuador, my dad and I were supposed to fly home MIA-DFW-LAX. Got on the plane and a mechanical problem was announced, which took long enough to fix that we would have missed our connection and would have had to spend the night in DFW had we stayed on the plane. I called AA CS to rebook us on the last MIA-LAX nonstop, which was leaving in 45 minutes or so. They told me we had to get off the plane in order to do that. Amazing GA helped us out and got us rebooked in F on the nonstop. Made it home only a couple of hours late.

My dad, a fairly inexperienced flyer, was astonished that I had the thought of calling airline reservations desk to get rebooked while sitting on a delayed plane and that it all worked out in the end. I imagine things were easier given that we were flying in International C/F (even though I have no status with AA).