For Dan Adams, it was set to be “the vacation of a lifetime.”
He said his mother died this year. “She left us some money. Her passion was travel and she said to use that money exclusively for travel,” he said.
But Adams’ first stop, in Barcelona, was unplanned: the United Airlines baggage office.
“One bag came out, second bag came out, third bag came out, and the fourth one didn’t,” Adams recalled.
Locating that fourth bag was supposed to be easy. Dan and his partner Kurt had dropped an Apple AirTag in it, a $20 to $30 battery-powered WiFi tracker that constantly transmits its location to your smartphone. Dan’s AirTag showed the missing bag was nearby -- behind closed doors. So, he told a United agent, who went looking.
“She came back and said, ‘there’s no sign of your bag. somebody probably took it,’” Adams said. “I said, ‘nobody took it, the AirTag shows that it’s right there. And she said, ‘we don’t go by AirTags, we go by our own system.’”
That’s about to change. But first, what happened to Dan’s bag?
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He says the agent promised to deliver his bag. Later, Dan says his AirTag showed his luggage was moving -- just not back to him.
“Farther and farther and farther away from Barcelona.” he said. “I knew at that point I would probably never see that bag again. and all the stuff that was inside of it.”
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He was right. It stopped at an apartment about 30 miles outside Barcelona. United didn’t dispute Dan’s story. It declined to share specifics, but told us it’s investigating and “working with local law enforcement.”
United and 14 other carriers will soon integrate AirTags with their baggage tracing systems, in a newly announced deal with Apple. United says passengers will be able to share AirTag data to help “customer service agents work more efficiently” and give “customers added peace of mind.”
Too late for Dan. “I trusted United, and I shouldn’t have,” he said.
Statistically, Dan’s disappearing bag is an exception.
“We’re seeing fewer mishandled bags than in previous years,” said Going.com’s Katy Nastro. The federal government’s latest airline report card, with data from August, shows U.S. airlines collectively transported more than 40 million bags. and successfully delivered more than 99% of them on time.
“People shouldn’t go into fear every time they check a bag that it’s going to be lost and never to be found,” Nastro said. Still, Nastro recommends snapping photos of your bag, inside and out, any time you check it. “We forget what we pack,” Nastro said. “If you have pictures to sort of go back to, it can be a lot easier making sure you’re getting the value of your contents back.”
As for Dan, United declared his bag missing for good. and paid him $1,459 for his loss. “I just want people to know what happened to me, so it doesn’t happen to them,” he said.
New for the 2024 holiday travel season, you’re entitled to a refund of your baggage fees when an airline loses your bag or delivers it late-- 12 hours for domestic flights; 15-30 hours for international trips – depending on how long your flight was. Those refunds are supposed to be automatic. If that doesn’t happen, you can let the NBC Bay Area Responds team know.
