Saturday night I was working flights in the South. We had an aircraft get hit by lightning coming into Nashville (BNA), so we needed to fly it empty to Dallas (DAL) for an inspection before we could carry revenue passengers again. Separately, we’d sent a flight crew to Dothan, AL, (DHN) to drop off one aircraft for heavy maintenance, test-fly another one that had been checked out, and fly it back to Dallas if it passed its test hop. This left us with a problem: one missing aircraft in Nashville and two extras in Dallas. We would’ve been forced to cancel a early flight in Nashville Sunday morning, resulting in lots of unhappy passengers. But our captain agreed to fly the checked-out aircraft to BNA instead of DAL to balance out the fleet and prevent the cancellation. That might not sound like a big deal, but understand that he had specifically agreed to go out to Dothan and back and was expecting to sleep in his own bed Saturday night. Instead, he stayed in Nashville and returned to Dallas the next day. He could have refused to change his plans and left us short in Nashville, but he didn’t. Once he took off for Nashville, I sent him a message thanking him again for his help. His reply said it all: “That’s why I came to work for SWA”.