US woman left her AirPods on a plane and tracked them to an airport employee’s home
A woman in the United States has traced her missing Apple AirPods to an airport worker’s home two weeks after he left them on a plane, according to media reports.
Earlier this month, Washington state resident Elisabeth Hayden was on her way back to Tokyo to meet her husband in Seattle and was separated from her AirPods during a layover in San Francisco, reports CNN.
At the San Francisco International Airport, he realized he had left his coat behind and the AirPods in his pocket.
Hayden inquired about retrieving it, but the flight attendant informed him that only a crew member could do so.
The valet did indeed bring the coat to him — and he boarded the next flight to Seattle, according to the report.
“A kid was screaming next to me, and I thought at least I had AirPods,” Hayden said.
He then reached into his jacket pocket and noticed that the pocket was open and the Airpods were not there.
During the flight, Hayden used Wi-Fi to monitor the headphones using the “Find My” app, which tracks Apple devices after the plane had already departed for Seattle.
Then he realized that the AirPods were moving.
“I’m a hard working person and I followed all the way from San Francisco to Seattle taking screenshots the whole time. I live an hour away from Seattle and when I got home I was still taking screenshots,” Hayden said.
The headphones eventually stopped moving in the Bay Area of the United States.
Hayden marked the headphones as “lost” on his app and pinged the person who had them with an alert and his number.
Additionally, the report said, he recruited a San Mateo police detective who worked at the San Francisco airport.
The detective traced the address from which the AirPods pinged to an airport contractor who loaded food onto planes.
When questioned by the authorities, the airport employee said that the headphones had been given to him by a cleaner, who denied knowing anything about the scenario, the report states.
When the AirPods were returned to Hayden 12 days later, he noted that they looked trampled.
He stated that after complaining about the condition of the headphones, United Airlines (on which he flew) gave him $271 and 5,000 air miles.
United Airlines confirmed that the employee was hired by the vendor instead of the airline.
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