What really happens when you lose your phone on a flight
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Airlines are leaving customers in the lurch by avoiding responsibility for lost items like phones or by outsourcing them. investigation found.
When which one? asked participants about their experiences with airlines in the past year, less than half (48%) Of those who lost their phone in flight, they said it was successfully returned.
Which? test this by buying four iPhones and deliberately leaving them on flights on four of the UK’s biggest carriers: BA, easyJet, Jet2 and Ryanair. Only two – lost with Jet2 and Ryanair – were restored.
On each phone, investigators activated Apple’s Find My Phone program tracking system so they can see where it went and track the airline’s efforts to get it back, and to make things even easier for airline employees, remotely set the lock screen to say “This phone is lost” with the number displayed to the searcher who needs to call.
Researchers forgot the first iPhone on a British Airways flight from Larnaca to Heathrow.
British Airways, as do all four airlines. Which? tested, actually transfers management of lost property to a third party – in the case of BA, Smart card. Even immediately after the phone was abandoned – when tracking still showed it was on or near the plane – Which? were unable to deal with BA directly.
Instead, they were directed to Smarte Carte, where they were able to view an online list of 36 lost phones at Heathrow. However, the phone was not found and was not listed.
Just a day later, Which? I saw that the phone had moved. But instead of being sent to a recycling facility, it was now about 15 miles from Heathrow, apparently in a cottage just a short drive from Windsor Castle.
Which? reported the matter to the police, who told Which? crime number and confirmed that the address was not linked to anyone working at Heathrow. They visited the cottage and spoke with the residents, but by this time the phone had stopped transmitting its location – either it was turned off, or the battery was dead – and the phone could not be restored.
What? The experience with easyJet was similar. After researchers left their phone on a flight from Nice to Luton, they were unable to speak to anyone at the airline who could help. Instead, easyJet referred them to their luggage handler Menziesin which they were asked to register the item as lost on another third-party website.
After registration, a confirmation email was promised, but it did not arrive. The easyJet website says items not claimed within 24 hours are handed over to the airport’s lost and found office, but after enquiring, Luton Airport told Which? it does not handle items left on airplanes. Like BA, easyJet did not provide any further advice or assistance in finding a phone.
In this case, the tracking didn’t work, meaning Which? Couldn’t remotely locate the phone. They never received any communication from airline or airport employees that the phone had been found, and the phone was never found.
Which? The experience of losing my phone with Jet2 was more positive. As with other airlines, Which? he was told to contact a third party after “losing” his phone on a flight from Alicante to Birmingham – in this case the airport’s lost and found property office. However, on a positive note, a day after the phone was reported missing, a Which? I received an email saying that the phone had been found. The only catch was that you had to pay a fee of £27 to claim it back.
Last phone What? abandoned on a Ryanair flight from Malta to Stansted. Although Ryanair claims planes are cleaned at every turn, the phone was somehow leaked after a Which? landed in London: Find My Phone revealed he traveled from Stansted to his next stop in Bari, Italy, before being spotted. At Bari airport, a kind airport employee called and said he had found it and it was flown back for 60 euros.
Says Rory Boland, editor of Which? Travel:
“Today, a phone is far from just a phone – it’s your wallet, a photo album, and when you fly, it’s most often also your boarding pass. When passengers lose something this important, you’d expect airlines to have systems in place to make it quick and easy to get it back to you, but when we tried losing our own phones, we found that too often this isn’t the case.
“Unfortunately, in the first few hours after losing an item, it is impossible to contact the airline and get help. Even if you see that he is still on the plane, you will be directed to the airport staff or a third party company. How difficult is it for airlines that have staff on board to arrange for the transfer and security of lost items to reunite their customers. As it stands, most carriers won’t even pick up the phone to help.”
2025-01-10 00:01:22