ITEM LEFT BEHIND ON LUFTHANSA FLIGHT

LUGANOPIRATE

Arriving in Frankfurt from Johannesburg with Lufthansa, and in Mrs LP’s hurry to get off the plane (as we expected long queues at immigration while we showed our Covid forms), I managed to leave my Samsung tablet in the seat pocket.

I only realised at security but by then it was too late to go back. I asked in the lounge and was directed to a website where I had to fill in a form. To cut a long story short I just received an email saying it was found and giving me the option to collect it in person or have it couriered to me. I was astounded to see it will cost me €138.59 (US$160) with sending costs, admin fee, credit card fee and VAT!

This compares with precisely nothing when I did the same thing on an internal flight in South Africa. I had it back in just 40 minutes and for some reason naively thought it would be as fast and efficient at Frankfurt.

The lesson, I guess, is to double-check every seat pocket before getting off and not be rushed by anyone.

GIUSEPPE

Someone has to bear the costs of shipping. In this case, I see no faults by the carrier.

All airlines are using third parties to forward items to customers. I forgot a jacket on board an Emirates flight a couple of years ago and I spent €80 (US$93) to get it back. Same options: to be collected in person or shipping.

STEVEN

Flight in first class from Chicago O’Hare International to Frankfurt connecting to Edinburgh. On arrival in Frankfurt I was handed my blue blazer by one of the flight attendants. On arrival in the First Class Terminal, where I had an approximately

3.5 hour connection, I discovered that I had been handed the wrong blue blazer (his grandmother’s matzo ball soup recipe in the inside pocket alerted me). I recalled a fellow passenger with a similar blazer across the aisle and my assumption was that we each had been given the wrong item. The staff at the terminal tracked the passenger down to find that he had travelled about 45 minutes from the airport. They took his blazer and rushed it to his location, exchanged the item and delivered my blazer to me. Exceptional service by Lufthansa staff and two very happy passengers.

ASK1945

A few years back I arrived home from Singapore and, as I went up to my front door, I realised that I didn’t have my keys. I had no idea where on this journey I might have lost them. I used our daughter’s copy to get in and had a new set cut.

Ten days later a courier turned up at my front door with my keys. Apparently, they had fallen out of my jacket pocket at security. They traced me through the Sentinel Gold tag attached to them.

I wasn’t charged anything.

FAROFLYER

A few years back I flew into Luton, UK on Easyjet. It was a very short trip to meet a customer in Luton, then to the Midlands. I had gathered my bags and placed my passport on the empty seat next to me ready to run to pick up a car. As I approached passport control, I realised that my passport was still on the seat where I had left it. Never mind, in those days I had a spare passport so continued to my meeting and returned a few hours later to recover my passport. Easyjet’s lost property was confused as to how I was returning to collect my passport, then advised me that they had handed it to Immigration. I wandered to the Immigration office to claim my passport. The young lady

said that she did have my passport but asked if I had any identification. I told her that I looked remarkably like the photo in the passport that she was holding.

SUPERCHRIS

I was on a flight with Mrs SuperChris from Qatar to Melbourne about ten years back (row 1, very comfortable), and woke up to see my wife nervously fiddling with the side of the seat’s innards. After some time, she admitted her watch had dropped down the back of the seat. We spent a few minutes looking, after which I said, ‘Look darling, let’s get you a new one; it wasn’t too expensive.’ That didn’t seem to placate her and she had to then admit, for reasons still unclear to me ten years on, that she had attached her engagement ring to it!

As we were an hour out from landing, staff had a go involving coat hangers and torches with no luck. After landing the staff were adamant we leave, and [said] they would get engineers on and return to us at the carousel – I completely refused and said I would wait. Waited about 30 minutes for an engineer to come on-board to successfully dismantle part of the seat and return said watch and ring.

Got to the baggage carousel last (obviously) to find someone had walked off with our luggage which then took a week to get returned.

I always smile now when certain carriers make a very specific announcement about anything dropped into the seats to get help rather than try and retrieve yourself as I think we were partly responsible for that!