AirTag reveals airline donated couple’s lost luggage to charity without explanation

As I wrote last month, AirTags are an indispensable travel accessory, especially for your checked luggage. Now, a couple in Canada is crediting an AirTag with helping them locate their lost luggage, but not before they watched it travel through Quebec and Ontario and sit at a mysterious storage facility for months, without any help from Air Canada.

AirTag leads couple to ‘wrongfully donated’ luggage

As reported by Insider, Nakita Rees and Tom Wilson were traveling back from their honeymoon when one of their checked bags, affixed with an AirTag, was left behind in Quebec. At first, the couple didn’t think much of it and simply filed a lost luggage with Air Canada.

Shortly thereafter, however, the AirTag revealed that the bag had been moved to a “public storage facility just outside Toronto.”

Rees detailed the experience in a series of TikTok videos, saying that the “lost” luggage sat at this storage facility for three months. Eventually, the couple decided to go to the storage facility itself, but they struck out on that visit. They then paid a visit to the Toronto Pearson Airport, where they were told that Air Canada doesn’t use the storage facility where AirTag indicated the bag was located.

Rees and Wilson then decided to file a police report to escalate the situation. The police opened the storage unit to find “wall to wall luggage,” but they couldn’t locate their specific luggage in the piles of 1,200 bags.

As the story started to go viral on TikTok, Air Canada assigned an “individual case handler” to Rees and Wilson. Once this person had been assigned to the case, the luggage was located within 24 hours and was delivered to the couple’s house within 48 hours.

Rees said in the video that everything in the bag was intact, including a bottle of wine. But, she told Insider, the airline partially blamed the couple because they left no identifying information inside the bag.

Eventually, the police investigation revealed that Air Canada had donated the bag to charity, and that charity used the storage facility in question.

In a statement to CBC, Air Canada attempted to do damage control:

“This customer travelled late in the summer at a time when all air carriers in Canada were still recovering from the COVID-related, systemic disruption of the entire air transport industry. One consequence was an elevated rate of baggage delays.

“In this particular case, the situation was compounded by the disconnection of the baggage tag at some point on the journey. Despite our best efforts, it was not possible for us to identify the bag’s owner. It was designated as unclaimed, and we moved to compensate the customer.”

Still, Rees and Wilson are perplexed at why they didn’t get any answers from the airline for four months. Furthermore, without the AirTag, it’s possible they would have never located the bag. After all, it was deemed “unclaimed” by the airline and donated to charity. Part of the issue, Rees said on TikTok, is that the luggage donated after just 30 days.

You can follow along with the full story via TikTok for more details.