If you have read an issue of Global Traveler lately, you’ll see we like to ask travel executives and leaders to share a comical travel experience in our One on One interview column. Well, in the office the other day I was sharing this completely unbelievable, can’t-make-this-stuff-up kind of story with the team, so I thought I’d share it as a comedic travel experience just as we ask in our interviews.

Here it goes …

I was recently traveling to Türkiye (as I wrote about on a previous blog), and my Air France flight was out of New York’s JFK. I live in Philadelphia, so I hired a car service to take me to JFK so I was able to work and relax during the two-hour drive. Well, we were finally on our way, so I pulled out my phone and headphones, mentally running through a checklist and listening to a podcast.

Everything was in place — or so I thought. Then, out of nowhere, I started to hear cars honking behind us.

I look up at the driver through the rear-view mirror and he stared back and said, “Oh no.”

My heart dropped. I whipped around to see the trunk wide open. My suitcase, the one holding everything I needed for the trip, had fallen out onto the expressway! The driver swerved to the shoulder, threw on the hazards and, without a second thought, jumped out of the car.

Before I could stop him, he dashed into the chaos of speeding cars. Horns blared — my suitcase was somewhere out there, but it was completely out of sight. We didn’t know how far back it had fallen out.

Panic set in, but then I remembered my saving grace: the AirTag I’d slipped into my luggage. I opened the app on my phone, watching as the dot blinked a few hundred feet behind us.

“HEY!” I shouted to the driver. He jogged back, breathless but determined. I could not believe this man was running into traffic. Committed, nonetheless. I explained we had to get off the expressway and loop around to get it. That took 15 minutes of praying my suitcase and materials weren’t flattened to the road by cars.

My eyes were glued to the AirTag’s location. We finally approached the spot, and there, against all odds, was my suitcase. Miraculously untouched by traffic, it sat on the side of the road.

The driver retrieved it with a relieved grin, and I couldn’t help but laugh — partly from the adrenaline and partly because of how absurd this story was and nobody was with me to experience this. “You guys will never believe what just happened,” I texted my family group chat.

As we pulled back onto the highway, my suitcase now sitting next to me rather than in the trunk, I settled into my seat, feeling like I’d already had a mini-adventure before even reaching the airport.

— Haley Fogarty, vice president of sales