My parents were supposed to connect to ORD-OKC yesterday but misconnected, and the only option was to go ORD-AUS-OKC. Got to AUS just fine but then delay creep set in. 9:07 PM departure progressively delayed to after 215 AM at one point. Thankfully my parents made it to the gate for the last AUS-DFW flight of the night, and the agent quickly rebooked them onward to OKC. Just for giggles I checked on AA3218's status and it's now delayed to a 7 PM departure tonight! What on earth is AA doing? 22 hour delay and counting? Why not just cancel when it was clear this flight wasn't going out anywhere near on time? So mind-numbingly stupid. Thankfully my parents had me available to help them but what do people do who have minimal knowledge/travel savvy?