Woman Who Left AirPods On Plane Tracked Them Down To Airport Worker's Home

A woman recently tracked
down her lost Apple AirPods to an airport worker's
home two weeks after she
first left them behind on a
plane.
Speaking to CNN, Alisabeth Hayden said she was
flying with United Airlines from Tokyo, where
she had been visiting her
husband, to Seattle earlier this month. Shortly
after getting off the plane
on a layover at San Francisco International Airport,
she realised she had left
her jacket behind and her
headphones too.
"I realized before I was
even off the plane," Ms
Hayden said, as per the
outlet. "I was the third
from last off the plane, so
I asked the flight attendant
if I could go and get it. He
said no - I was required
by federal law to get off
the plane and stand beside
it, where the strollers are
brought to. I was tired, he
said he'd bring it to me, I
said OK," she added.
The flight attendant indeed
bring the jacket to her, following which she boarded
her next flight to Seattle. "A
child was screaming next
to me and I thought, 'At
least I have my AirPods,'"
she recalled. However, she
said that when she reached
for her jacket, she realised
her AirPods were gone.
The plane had already taken off to Seattle, but Ms
Hayden used inflight WiFi
to track the earphones using the "Find My" app,
which tracks Apple devices. The headphones were
showing at a cargo terminal at SFO, before moving
to different terminals and
then down Highway 101.
The earplugs ended up at
what appeared to be a residential address in the Bay
Area and stayed put there
for three days. Ms Hayden
marked her headphones as
"lost" on her app, pinging
an alert and her number to
the person who had them.
She told the outlet that she
enlisted the help of a detective at the San Mateo police force who was working at SFO. He matched
the address the AirPods
were pinging from to an
airport contractor working
to load food onto aircraft.
When questioned by the
cops, the airport worker said the headphones
had been given to him
by a cleaner, who denied
knowledge of the situation. When they were returned to Hayden 12 days
later, she said the AirPods
looked like they'd been
stomped on.
She told the outlet that
United Airlines gave her
$271 and 5,000 air miles
after complaining about
the condition of the headphones. The airlines also
confirmed that the worker
was employed by a vendor
and not the airline.
The matter is now being
handled by the San Francisco Airport Police Department, which plans to
submit the case to the San
Mateo District Attorney's
office.