Illustration by Dustin Elliott

Did you hear the one about the professor who spent 24 hours trapped in airport hell trying to reach a conference on happiness?

It's not a joke. It's what happened to Michal Strahilevitz.

She'd paid extra for a daytime flight from San Francisco to Miami to avoid the dreaded red-eye. Then traffic made her one minute late to the gate. Her airline rebooked her on the overnight flight, the very one she was trying to skip — which also got delayed.

By the time she arrived in Florida, she'd missed half of her meeting. 

The conference topic? Happiness and well-being.

When Strahilevitz, an expert on consumer psychology, told fellow attendees her story, they roared with laughter.

"When plans fall apart, laughter can help relieve the stress and put things in perspective," she says.

That's what a lot of travelers are discovering.

Humor is an essential travel skill.

Travel has become so absurd that humor is now a survival skill. Every delay, lost bag, or gate change widens what I call the humor gap — the space between how our trips are supposed to go and the circus that actually unfolds. Psychologists say that chasm is something we should be laughing at.

We board planes expecting the smooth efficiency promised in airline commercials. We get endless lines, snarky service, and tiny seats.

"Laughter is the brain's way of saying, 'I can't control this, so I'm choosing to metabolize it differently,'" says Sydney Ceruto, a psychiatrist who specializes in stress. "It's not relief. It's surrender with dignity."

Modern travel is a joke, and we're the punch line. Laughing at the chaos gives travelers a sense of control when everything else feels out of reach.

Here are the funniest travel mishaps.

When it comes to travel, the humor gap is often widest when things go terribly wrong.

Here's one: Daniel and Gemma Ng thought they'd covered everything for their baby's first flight. Extra formula. An iPad full of kids' TV shows. Extra clothes for the baby.

The flight went perfectly. As they prepared to land, they congratulated themselves. They'd nailed it.

And then their baby projectile-vomited all over Dad.

"He didn't miss a single clothing item," remembers Daniel Ng, who runs a luggage company. "Hoodie, T-shirt, pants, socks. Everything I was wearing was dripping wet."

Then it dawned on him that the only thing he forgot to pack was a change of clothes — for himself.

Even the professionals can't stop laughing at their travel experiences. 

Jeremy Nunes, a stand-up comedian, was boarding a flight with a five-minute connection window. Then a crewmember informed him that overhead space was gone and that all remaining bags would need to be loaded below.

There were lots of bags. The attendants started labeling the luggage and slowly removing them, one by one.

Nunes, worried he would miss his connection because of a flight delay, offered to help carry bags off while passengers stopped him with questions.

"Can I get a seat belt extender?" "Sorry, I don't work here."

Nunes made his connection with seconds to spare. The chaos, of course, became a comedy bit. "Even for non-comedians, they enjoy retelling the mishaps," he says. "That common bond makes for great comedy."

Here's the real travel hack.

What makes the humor of travel so powerful? You can use it to have a better trip.

Ceruto suggests the ultimate strategy is to laugh before things go wrong.

"When you board your flight already amused by the absurdity of airport culture, you've already inoculated your nervous system against panic," she says. "Humor isn't coping. It's pre-coping."

Travel these days is rarely pleasant or predictable.The humor gap isn’t going away. If anything, it’s widening. The trick is to step into it willingly and with a sense of irony instead of outrage.

I speak from experience. As a young travel writer, I used to take every problem personally. I've learned that negativity isn't worth carrying.

Today, when I see a tyrannical TSA agent screaming at me to remove everything from my pockets, I just chuckle. When I spot a surprise fee on my car rental bill, I laugh at the ingenuity (a "tire disposal" fee — wow!). When a flight attendant jabs an angry finger at me and commands me to put away my laptop, I smile.

That's because after takeoff, I'll open my computer again and write a story about the ridiculousness of it all — like I am right now.

Christopher Elliott is an author, consumer advocate, and journalist. He founded Elliott Advocacy, a nonprofit organization that helps solve consumer problems. He publishes Elliott Confidential, a travel newsletter, and the Elliott Report, a news site about customer service. If you need help with a consumer problem, you can reach him here or email him at chris@elliott.org.