Remember the news story about a German travel agency taking reservations for a “clothing optional” flight? And the report that both the pilot and co-pilot of a Go! Airlines flight may have been napping when they were supposed to be flying the plane between Honolulu and Hilo?

I was pretty sure these were joke stories. The sort of shenanigans we’d read about in the travel pages on April Fools’ Day.

But, as I write in my MSNBC.com column today, it turns out that truth is indeed stranger than fiction.