To see if this is true, we left iPhones in the seat pockets or behind the tray table on four airlines: British Airways, easyJet, Jet2 and Ryanair.
On each phone, we activated Apple’s Find My Phone tracking system so we could check where it went and monitor efforts by airlines to locate them.
Each phone had a message on its screen reading ‘this phone is lost’ and providing a number to call.
However, three days after leaving the first iPhone – on a BA flight from Cyprus to London Heathrow – Find My Phone is saying that it’s turned up at a cottage near Windsor. We’re pretty sure we’ll never see it again.
And it’s not the only phone that will disappear for ever.
How our phone ended up at a cottage near Windsor
The first thing we do after leaving the phone on the BA plane is to ask the company what to do next.
On its website, it says: ‘Unfortunately, we do not have a central lost property team so we are unable to help if your property has not been handed in at the airport.’
That ‘unfortunately’ makes it sound as though not having a ‘lost property team’ is something disappointing that happened to them, such as inclement weather.
In fact BA, like all four airlines, has outsourced its lost property handling to a third party. And that’s part of the problem: in the crucial hours after the item is lost, we often found it impossible to find anyone who cared enough to help.
From the BA website, we’re directed to Heathrow’s lost property handler Smarte Carte. The Smarte Carte website is the digital equivalent of being ushered into a back room filled with lost phones and being invited to dig through the crates. It has a list of 36 iPhones lost at Heathrow.
But at this point, just an hour after leaving the handset, we know Smarte Carte doesn’t have our property. Our tracking shows that the phone is either on the plane or right next to it. But the next day, when we check, it’s turned up about 14 miles from Heathrow in what looks, on Google Maps, like a nice cottage near Windsor.
Then, we assume, the battery dies. Has it been stolen? By setting our account as ‘lost’, we’ve ensured it can’t be used to make calls or go online, so it seems useless. However, there are reports of iPhones being sent abroad for their parts.
We ask BA if a member of its staff found the phone, but it won’t say and just repeatedly tells us we should speak to Smarte Carte. Smarte Carte says it never received the phone.
Later on, BA says: ‘Our crews remind customers upon arrival at their destination to check they have all their belongings before leaving the aircraft. In the unlikely event that belongings are left behind, we follow a process managed by Heathrow Airport and their third-party supplier, Smarte Carte, like other airlines at the airport.’
I report the loss to the police and give them the address of the cottage where, according to Find My Phone, the handset turned up.
The police then visit the cottage and speak to the residents who say they don’t have the phone. This may be unusual. The police say they will normally only visit if the phone is still broadcasting its location. In my case, we’ve lost contact with the phone and it seems to be gone forever.
The police confirm that they’ve checked on the address and it wasn’t linked to anyone who works for Heathrow.
No help, no phone
EasyJet’s system is similar to BA’s. After we leave a phone on a flight from Nice to Luton, it isn’t possible to speak to anyone who can help. Instead, easyJet directs us to email its baggage handler Menzies, which tells us to register our item lost on another third-party website.
After doing all this, we’re promised we’ll get a confirmation email, but nothing arrives. EasyJet’s website says items not claimed within 24 hours are passed to the airport’s lost property office. But Luton Airport tells us it doesn’t handle property left on planes.
Like BA, easyJet doesn’t offer any further advice or help in finding in the phone. When we ask easyJet’s press office, it says it has procedures to get lost items back to passengers – but our phone wasn’t found. So another handset lost forever.
Reward required
Like other airlines, Jet2 also tells us to contact the airport – but a day after reporting our phone lost on a flight from Alicante to Birmingham, I get an email to say it’s been found. The phone and I have an emotional reunion in the Luggage Point office in Birmingham. Part of that emotion is shock that it costs £27 to claim it back. So that’s two phones lost, one found.
Only Ryanair to go. This time we’re humming a teary eyed ‘We’ll Meet Again’ as we send the last phone on its mission – a flight from Malta to Stansted.
But, surprise, we’re in luck. Later the same evening, I get a call from a kind airport employee saying they have the phone. The only drawback is that the employee doesn’t work for Stansted.
They’re a thousand miles away, at Bari Airport. We can have our phone couriered to us for the small consideration of €60.
However, it seems to have mysteriously missed our iPhone during its cleaning blitz. It remained on the plane from Stansted all the way to southern Italy, but at least an employee was kind enough to hand it in.
Ryanair said that all lost items found are handed to the airport lost property office and, like other airlines, it doesn’t take responsibility for ‘property that’s not placed in its possession’.
But then that’s the whole problem, isn’t it? Neither BA nor easyJet seemed very interested in what had happened to the valuable items left on their flights.
source https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/we-deliberately-lost-phones-on-british-airways-easyjet-jet-and-ryanair-flights-amCQv0l2JTYm