One of my instructors who flew for Eastern told me this story:

He was reviewing the paperwork for his flight when word came down that the airline was shut down. Everyone was supposed to just leave their station and go home immediately, but he decided that with a planeload of waiting passengers he couldn't just walk away and leave them like that. So he talked it over with his FO, found a few flight attendants who wanted to go to the destination of his flight, and flew it.

At the destination, he walked off the plane and was about to go try and find a jump seat home when he was asked to fly the plane back to its origin because the original crew who was supposed to fly the plane back had all gotten drunk when they heard that the airline had shut down.