!(IE 7) function(L) L.start("baseUrl":"mc.us1.list-control.com","uuid":"8945c58929e9ea5d181a84059","lid":"42fc6ece0d") )

Lost and Found

Gary Gatwick’s Underground Adventure

Lost and Found, , ,

The Airport Search journey team traveled in and round London with Gatwick Airport’s mascot, Gary Gatwick, remaining week.

Our task: find out how smooth it's far to use Gatwick Airport as a base when travelling the region.

We traveled with the aid of teach and underground to visit sights in critical London, the Brighton beach, and the ancient West Sussex towns of Arundel, and Amberly

Every forestall became an educational journey and Gary Gatwick become an excellent host and manual.

But one ride at the underground turned into a lesson about the kindness and professionalism of the those who work for Transport for London.

Because Gary Gatwick someway were given left behind at the Farringdon station.

It took approximately 10 stops to recognise Gary Gatwick was missing.

We have been, of course, horrified that he’d been left in the back of.

And we weren’t assured we’d be reunited.

He became traveling in our small blue backpack and, virtually, our revel in with public shipping in other towns led us to expect that the backpack might be taken by every other passenger, thrown out, or, worse, dealt with as a suspicious, unattended bundle and blown up!

But none of that came about.

While beneficial station attendants at some other station made calls to the Farringdon station on our behalf to inquire about our lost object, our little backpack was located and grew to become in to the misplaced belongings workplace on the station.

This customer support supervisor identified Gary Gatwick, took desirable care of him, and logged his go to into the facts.

When we eventually made our way lower back to the Farringdon station and asked to be directed to the manager’s workplace, anybody on obligation knew simply who we had been.

“Oh, you’re the people searching out the undergo! Go that manner.”

We took a bit of ribbing, however as soon as we signed for our misplaced property we had been again on our way.

The London Underground, like maximum different public transit networks, is a sprawling machine. And, clutching Gary Gatwick close so we didn’t lose him once more, we concept we’d just soften back into the ocean of passengers.

But when we were given again to the station platform we encountered Kevin.

He’s the Transport for London worker who had determined Gary Gatwick at the platform and he’s the only who made certain Gary changed into secure.

Kevin seemed truely satisfied to see us reunited with Gary Gatwick and we’ve declared him our hero!

Denver Airport saves Princess Kitty

Airports, Lost and Found, ,

DENVER Airport kitty

An almost-too-lovely tale approximately how the Lost & Found branch at Denver International Airport rescued a filled animal named Princess Kitty is making the rounds.

Both Sonja Wieck and her nine-12 months-vintage daughter, Annie, have been devasted after they found out Annie had left the beloved and nicely-traveled Princess Kitty on a DEN Airport tram.

Wieck sent a tweet to the airport asking for help and the airport personnel no longer handiest determined the crammed animal but gave it a tour of the airport and the attention that a princess merits.

Denver airport kitty 2

Denver airport kitty 3

Denver airport kitty 4

Denver Airport kitty 5

Denver airport kitty 6

(All pix courtesy Denver International Airport)

Airports & airlines work hard to return misplaced objects

Lost and Found,

As a current NerdWallet look at points out, the amount of luggage lost by airlines spikes all through the vacation journey season.

But passengers do their honest share of losing things on airplanes and in airports year-round.

In 2011, for instance, the misplaced-and-found department at Portland International Airport (PDX) logged nearly sixteen,000 misplaced items. So a long way this year, passengers have left in the back of nearly as many items, and the irritating vacation journey season hasn’t even begun.

And it’s no longer just mobile telephones, chargers, laptops and eyeglasses that distracted and exhausted travelers depart behind.

“We’ve had dentures, a spare tire, a live fish – in water – and a Crock-Pot with food still inner” grew to become in, airport spokesperson Kama Simonds advised NBC News.

A brief assessment of the searchable database at San Diego International indicates a colander, a piñata, a poster of a U-boat, handcuffs and scented, coloured pencils most of the items expecting their owners’ retrieval.

At Denver International, gadgets left at the back of have covered chainsaws, a 60-inch flat screen TV and the back seat of a passenger van, spokesperson Laura Coale said.

“We do everything in our strength to discover the man or woman and connect them with their misplaced object,” Coale stated. “If the item has a name or nation indexed on it, we can conduct a search for them. If cellular telephones are unlocked, we are able to name the remaining number and also search for an ICE [In case of emergency] touch,” she said.

Airports and airways normally have a hard and fast time limit for a way long an object may be retained. Southwest Airlines states that it will spend 30 days searching out a passenger’s lost object and once all efforts were exhausted to locate the owner of a found object, the item will be “salvaged” and all proceeds donated to charity.

Denver International shops gadgets for 30 days. Beyond that, garb is donated to Denver Human Services; the whole lot else turns into surplus and goes to public sale.

The Transportation Security Agency also has a 30-day time limit for items left at airport protection checkpoints. After that, gadgets are shipped to a country-via-state detailed collection facility and “are taken into consideration nonreturnable,” stated spokesperson David Castelveter. Travelers who've left some thing in the back of need to “touch the lost-and-found variety for the respective airport.” Start via calling TSA (866-289-9673) or searching out a particular misplaced-and-found contact on its website.

Acting speedy is crucial, however identifying where you can have lost some thing and in which to document a claim may be confusing. Items misplaced on airplanes (and once in a while in gate maintain regions) are added to the airlines. In a few airports, inclusive of PDX, gadgets left at TSA checkpoints and on shuttle buses are introduced to a significant office; in different airports everything is stored separate. Some huge airports have sophisticated, searchable databases; others require which you record a declare with a phone call or email, and maintain calling back to peer if your item has been discovered.

Websites such as AirportLostandFound.com – which presently displays details for several lost Kindles, a pair of custom designed earplugs and greater than 200 other misplaced objects – promises to look for suits inside the lost-and-found databases of more than one airports and airlines as well as the ones of food and retail outlets within airports. If they locate your object, the web page will try to prepare a reunion, but there may be a price.

As the busy holiday journey season tactics, right here are some fundamentals for locating your stuff – and not losing it within the first location.

  • Identify cellular telephones, laptops, books, raincoats and other objects with facts (telephone range, address sticky label) as a way to help a person return a located object.
  • Don’t placed something in the seatback pocket of an plane. It’s simply too clean to depart something at the back of.
  • If you lose something, act speedy. Retrace your steps, name in or log a claim with the airport and the airline as soon as viable.
  • Don’t surrender wish. It can also take some days for an object to be determined, became-in and logged right into a database.

(My article: Airports & Airlines work hard to return your misplaced gadgets first regarded on NBC NEW Travel)

 

What occurs to items left at airport checkpoints?

Lost and Found,

Each Friday on msnbc.com’s Overhead Bin, I music down the answer to a reader’s question. This week’s query changed into: What takes place to all that stuff ‘surrendered’ at airport safety checkpoints?

Betty Spencer doesn’t tour an awful lot, however she’s curious approximately what occurs to gadgets confiscated or surrendered at airport protection checkpoints. “There are such a lot of testimonies of people having to give up objects,” Spencer, a patient bills counselor in Spokane, Wash., wrote to Overhead Bin. “I wondered if any of the gadgets can be donated or recycled. I would hate to consider a lot waste.”

The Transportation Security Administration does certainly grow to be with lots of stuff: Since 9/11, the TSA has detected about 50 million prohibited objects, together with four,six hundred firearms, at some stage in airport checkpoint screening.

Hazardous substances are disposed of, and dangerous or illegal objects which includes guns and explosives are became over to regulation enforcement. But tourists do have a few say in what happens to other items.

“TSA offers passengers multiple options at the checkpoint for prohibited gadgets that are less dangerous and not illegal,” said TSA spokesperson Greg Soule. “Passengers can go back them to their vehicles, p.c. them in checked bags, or at some airports, mail them domestic to themselves.”

More regularly than no longer, tourists emerge as surrendering their items at the checkpoint. After that, Soule says, the objects turn out to be being donated to kingdom governments “to be auctioned off or sold as revenue. TSA in no way earnings from surrendered or misplaced items on the checkpoint.”

Some states, which include Pennsylvania, function a brisk and worthwhile enterprise selling objects left behind at airports in the country – and beyond.

“Not all states have a application that’s huge enough to accept all the gadgets left at airports,” stated Troy Thompson, spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of General Services. “But we do. And we acquire pallets of gadgets from New York’s JFK and LaGuardia airports and from a few airports in Ohio and Maryland.”

Thompson stated all the objects Pennsylvania gathers become at a warehouse, wherein it’s taken care of.

“We get lots of pocketknives, scissors and corkscrews,” said Thompson, “however also frying pans and different cookware, and gear consisting of drills, saws, hatchets and machetes. Some of it makes you scratch your head and surprise how people concept they’d get those things on the plane.”

A sampling of the gadgets are positioned out in a store on the nation warehouse in Harrisburg, but most of the gadgets get sold in lots, by using weight, on-line at public sale. Since 2004, Pennsylvania has earned about $seven hundred,000 from auctions held for many years on eBay and, soon, on govdeals.com.

Lost and determined at Frankfurt Airport

Air Travel, Airlines, Airplanes, Lost and Found, , ,

I’m tickled to be one in every of Lufthansa’s guests for a experience at the Airbus A380 plane visiting from Frankfurt Airport to San Francisco International Airport on May tenth, the primary day the massive aircraft starts everyday carrier to SFO.

Airbus A380 at Frankfurt

I’ll have plenty of pix and info to share after my 10-hour ride, which comes after many hours spent journeying Frankfurt Airport.

Among my stops these days was the airport’s Lost and Found branch, where Mr. Wallrodt (pictured beneath) became kind enough to take a moment faraway from his undertaking of trying to find the rightful proprietor of this backpack.

Wallrodt instructed me that the airport’s Lost and Found department gets approximately 80,000 misplaced gadgets a yr, and a median of 300 lost laptops each month. Many of the gadgets do become being back to their owners, but each 3 months the airport holds an public sale to cast off unclaimed items.

The strangest object Wollrodt recollects being was his workplace? A parrot that didn’t say too much and turned into quickly reunited with its owner.