These are just some of the items travelers leave behind at airports and on airplanes that end up in the lost & found.
For a news story we are working on about the systems airports and airlines use to catalog and return lost items, we’d like to hear about your experiences with airport lost & found departments.
Did you leave behind something at an airport that was sentimental, irreplaceable, valuable, odd, or unusual?
(We’d especially like to hear about the odd & unusual…)
How did you go about trying to retrieve your lost item? And were you successful or not?
Resolved to fly more in 2020? How to keep your stuff.
In 2019, airline passengers tried to take hundreds of thousands of prohibited and banned items through airport security checkpoints in the United States.
It doesn't matter how "lovely" this pink and gold handled knife is with pink hearts, the word "Love" emblazoned on the handle and 3 small pink hearts cut into the blade. It's still just another knife, prohibited from being carried onto a plane. Caught by #TSA at @tfgreenairport. pic.twitter.com/SExqafS3qr
Transportation Security Administration officers found hatchets, inert grenades, fireworks, firearms (most of them loaded) and so many knives that the TSA doesn’t even keep a count.
Instead, the agency boxes them up, weighs them and hands pallets of knives and other “voluntarily abandoned” property over to state agencies to be sold as surplus property.
A man brought this revolver to the @TSA checkpoint at @tfgreenairport on Sunday and was arrested by the police. He told officials that he had no idea how it came to be in his possession. pic.twitter.com/ykP3hee3US
TSA officials say passengers who don’t want to leave a banned item behind at the checkpoint have a few options:
If
the item is approved for checked baggage, a passenger can put the item in a
carry-on bag and go check it in or ask the airline to retrieve an already
checked back and put the item in there.
Another option: Airport Mailers and some other companies have kiosks set up near security checkpoints at many airports where travelers may package up items and pay to mail them home.
But
it’s not just items on TSA’s “no fly’ list that get left
behind at airports.
Each
month, TSA also collects and catalogs 90,000 to 100,000 other items that are
perfectly legal to travel with, but which are inadvertently left behind at
airport checkpoints by harried and distracted travelers.
Those
items range from scarves and sunglasses to laptops, smartphones and some odd
“How did they forget THAT?” items such as bowling balls, violins, gold teeth
and urns and boxes filled with human cremains.
On a post-holiday tour of TSA’s Lost & Found room at Reagan National Airport, we spotted plenty of those items, as well as multiple bags filled with left behind IDs.
We also saw shelves lined with ballcaps, CPAP breathing machines, winter coats, car key fobs that will cost $200 or more to replace, car seats, canes and fully packed carry-on bags.
It’s
easy to see how hats and scarves get left behind in the bins, but what about
laptops, entire carry-on bags and other essential items?
Besides
the “people are in a rush,” factor, TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein has some
theories:
“When
it comes to laptops, many brands are grey and the same color as the checkpoint
bins, so it can be easy to overlook your laptop,” says Feinstein. “Also, if a
bin has an advertisement in the bottom, travelers’ eyes may be drawn to the ad
and cause them to miss the driver’s license and keys still in the bin.”
The number of bins people use may also contribute to the pile-up in the Lost & Found. If you’ve scattered your stuff across multiple bins (coats here, electronics there, a flat laptop and an ID in another bin), you may overlook items in the last bin as you rush to take your stuff out and stack up the used bins.
The pile of canes?
“It’s not that we have so many miraculous recoveries at TSA checkpoints,” says Farbstein, “I think attendants and family members helping wheelchair users who also have canes often forget to pick up the canes once they’re through the checkpoint.”
Keeping
your stuff out of Lost & Found
TSA keeps items left behind at security checkpoints for a minimum of 30 days and posts phone numbers on its website where travelers can contact the Lost & Found department at each airport.
(Keep
in mind that airports and airlines will have their own lost and found
procedures for things left in the terminals and on airplanes.)
To improve your chances of getting your stuff back – or not
losing it in the first place – Farbstein offers these tips:
Tape a business card or some other form of ID to
your laptop or smartphone. “So many models are alike, so this can make all the
difference in getting yours back,” said Farbstein.
Before you get to the checkpoint, or while
you’re standing online, take time to consolidate all your miscellaneous items
(i.e. scarves, hats, gloves) and take everything out of your pockets (keys,
phones, wallets, etc.). Instead of putting small items in a bin, put them in
your carry-on in an extra plastic bag you’ve packed just for that purpose. If
you don’t put loose items in the bin to begin with, you eliminate the chance of
leaving anything in the bin on the other side.
Pay attention to everything you put in the bins,
including things that may have a high emotional value. “A laptop may cost thousands of dollars, but I can assure
you that an old beat-up stuffed animal that a child has left behind is valuable
to the parent who is now dealing with a crying child,” says Farbstein.
Help is on the way
Looking forward, as part of a $96.8 million contract
awarded last year to Smiths Detection, in 2020 most large and major airports in
the United States will be getting computed technology 3D X-ray scanners at the
checkpoints. This new machinery will allow travelers to keep their electronics
in their carry-on bags and reduce the chance of so many laptops and other
gadgets getting left behind.
(My story: “How to avoid leaving stuff behind at the TSA checkpoint” first appeared on CNBC in a slightly different version)
Cellphones, laptops, neck pillows and books are among the most common forgotten items, but bowling balls, valuable jewelry and other treasures also end up in airport lost and found centers.
Last month, the pilot of a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight heading to Kuala Lumpur from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia requested permission to return to the gate after a mother realized she’d left her baby behind in the boarding gate area.
Last week authorities at Alaska’s Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC) turned to social media seeking help in identifying the owner of a plastic bag containing human ashes that was left at a security checkpoint back in August.
Picture perfect
About 1000 items a day end up in the 5,000-square-foot
warehouse managed by the Lost & Found department at Los Angeles
International Airport. Along with the electronics, jewelry and photo IDs, LAX
police found a still unclaimed script for the yet-to-air season premiere of a popular
TV show that ended the previous season with a cliffhanger. (And no, LAX
officials won’t reveal the show, nor the plot.)
Most airports keep found inventory for 30, 60 or 90 days
before discarding, donating or auctioning the items. But a few years back, airport
police at LAX could not bring themselves to discard a wedding photo album found
locked in a briefcase along with a mirror, a tablecloth and matching napkins.
A
Facebook campaign eventually helped identify the couple, who hadn’t even realized the album was
missing.
Questions
about a quilt
Last May, a floral box with a handmade quilt inside and a
card reading “Charlene and Lark” was found at the Salt Lake City International
Airport.
It was obvious that a lot of time and effort went in to making the quilt. So the airport lost & found team held onto it longer than the 30 days they usually do.
Facebook led the team to the photographer for Charlene and Lark’s wedding, who shared a contact for Charlene. But because the quilt had been intended as a wedding gift Lark had left behind after attending the funeral of his aunt – the quilt maker – Charlene at first ignored emails and calls about a quilt she’d never heard of. But she eventually called back and claimed the quilt.
Serial
numbers and skunks
Airport teams often use investigative skills
and, sometimes, compassion, in finding a lost item its home.
Earlier this year the lost & found staff
at Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) International Airport was able to reunite a St.
Louis passenger with a valuable and sentimental piece of jewelry after calling
Cartier customer service with the serial number on a found bracelet.
And, after an airline refused to let a passenger
at Nashville International Airport take his pet skunk onboard or check it as
baggage, customer service supervisor Chris Patterson agreed to look after Pepe
the skunk for a few days. “After a week I
realized that Pepe’s owner would not be coming back for him, and I was fine
with that decision,” said Patterson, who adopted Pepe and later found him a
home in a zoo.
Keeping an eye on
lost items
After a Central Oregon festival celebrating the August 2017
eclipse, the lost and found in Redmond Municipal Airport (RDM) was overflowing with
everything from camping gear and
hula hoops to drugs and psychedelic paraphernalia. Water bottles, neck pillows
and sunglasses are the usual fare, said RDM spokeswoman Erinn Shaw, “But we
also once had a live chicken.”
Portland
International Airport also reports a wide range of odd left behind item,
including a 9-pound zucchini and a glass eye. “The zucchini is long
gone,” said PDX spokeswoman Kama Simonds, “But the glass eye has been in the
lost and found for a few years.”
TSA’s favorites
Courtesy TSA
The most common items left at airport security checkpoints around the country are belts, keys, glasses (sunglasses and prescription), photo IDs and laptops, says TSA spokesperson Lisa Farbstein, but she snaps and posts on social media photos of some odd left-behind items. On the list: diamond watches and engagement rings, bowling balls, canes and walkers, a Santa statue, Halloween masks and thousands of dollars in cash.
“The most
unusual item I think I have seen left at a checkpoint was a portable child’s
potty at Dulles Airport,” said Farbstein. It was returned.”
But passengers do their fair share of losing things on airplanes and in airports year-round.
In 2011, for example, the lost-and-found department at Portland International Airport (PDX) logged nearly 16,000 misplaced objects. So far this year, passengers have left behind almost as many items, and the hectic holiday travel season hasn’t even begun.
And it’s not just cell phones, chargers, laptops and eyeglasses that distracted and exhausted travelers leave behind.
“We’ve had dentures, a spare tire, a live fish – in water – and a Crock-Pot with food still inside” turned in, airport spokesperson Kama Simonds told NBC News.
A quick review of the searchable database at San Diego International shows a colander, a piñata, a poster of a U-boat, handcuffs and scented, colored pencils among the items waiting for their owners’ retrieval.
At Denver International, items left behind have included chainsaws, a 60-inch flat screen TV and the back seat of a passenger van, spokesperson Laura Coale said.
“We do everything in our power to locate the person and connect them with their lost item,” Coale said. “If the item has a name or state listed on it, we will conduct a search for them. If cell phones are unlocked, we will call the last number and also look for an ICE [In case of emergency] contact,” she said.
Airports and airlines typically have a set time limit for how long an item will be retained. Southwest Airlines states that it will spend 30 days looking for a passenger’s lost item and once all efforts have been exhausted to find the owner of a found item, the item will be “salvaged” and all proceeds donated to charity.
The Transportation Security Agency also has a 30-day time limit for items left at airport security checkpoints. After that, items are shipped to a state-by-state designated collection facility and “are considered nonreturnable,” said spokesperson David Castelveter. Travelers who have left something behind should “contact the lost-and-found number for the respective airport.” Start by calling TSA (866-289-9673) or looking for a specific lost-and-found contact on its website.
Acting fast is essential, but figuring out where you may have lost something and where to file a claim can be confusing. Items lost on airplanes (and sometimes in gate hold areas) are delivered to the airlines. In some airports, such as PDX, items left at TSA checkpoints and on shuttle buses are brought to a central office; in other airports everything is kept separate. Some large airports have sophisticated, searchable databases; others require that you file a claim with a phone call or e-mail, and keep calling back to see if your item has been found.
Websites such as AirportLostandFound.com – which currently displays details for several lost Kindles, a pair of customized earplugs and more than 200 other lost items – promises to search for matches in the lost-and-found databases of multiple airports and airlines as well as those of food and retail outlets within airports. If they find your item, the site will try to organize a reunion, but there may be a fee.
As the busy holiday travel season approaches, here are a few basics for finding your stuff – and not losing it in the first place.
Identify cell phones, laptops, books, raincoats and other items with information (phone number, address sticker) that will help someone return a found item.
Don’t put anything in the seatback pocket of an airplane. It’s just too easy to leave something behind.
If you lose something, act fast. Retrace your steps, call in or log a claim with the airport and the airline as soon as possible.
Don’t give up hope. It may take a few days for an item to be found, turned-in and logged into a database.
