Airlines don't actually care that much about loyalty, they care about profit. Obviously the two can be related, but not always.

If airlines were to target your mom, you claim they would benefit from it. I would ask what they can do to target the infrequent customer, aside from miles from flights and allowing them to earn more miles through credit cards. And depending on what you think they should do to target loyalty from your mom, how would they profit? Would the program's cost be more than the relatively small amount they make off of an occasional flyer?

Generally they don't make much off of a flight here and there. The occasional fliers they care about are those that pay for full fare premium cabins.