Visited Florida in 1988 on my own, but decided to route out via New York for a couple of days tourist stuff on the way. Great flight out on an American Trans Air TriStar, and then on to Miami on US Airways. A couple of weeks later flew back up to JFK, then headed for the checkin only to be given a food voucher and told that that the flight would be going at midnight instead of 2000. This time the airline was Trans International (a short lived charter carrier, not the Trans International that became Transamerica), who were flying a couple of DC8s at the time. Transpired that our aircraft was sick, so they were going to use their other aircraft, but it had to be flown in from Las Vegas. No big deal - I had a good book to read.
Unfortunately as we gathered at the gate, the Nigerian Airways staff (they were handling the flight) then had to tell us that our aircraft had blown a tyre on landing, but they were trying to source a new one. Chatting to the engineer as we were boarding, it turned out that the captain had to do a tour of the maintenance hangars and ended up buying a new tyre from ABX, cash in hand, including fitting! We finally took off at dawn (5am), with a fuel stop at Gander before arriving at Stansted nearly 10 hours late. Then it was off into London to get a train to Manchester, so didn't get home until after midnight, with work the next day - which wasn't the most productive one I've ever had!
Learnt a lesson that day to look a little further than just the price when buyin air tickets!