Introduction
I usually never forget or leave things when I’m traveling or being out and about. I’m usually paranoid when I check out of hotel rooms and go through it 2 or 3 times before leaving it. I did accidentally leave a phone charger once at a Radisson, but I was able to turn around and pick it up. For the most part, I’m usually careful about these things.
The first lost iPad
Anyway, back to my story, about 5 years ago, I flew Seattle to Beijing on Delta. I was in coach at the time. GASP! Hey look, I hadn’t gotten serious in this hobby yet. I remember I sat in an aisle seat, and I just forgot it in the seat back in front of me. I only realized I left it on the plane after I got to my friend’s house in Beijing. It was nearly midnight at the time, so we figure we’ll just wait till the next morning to go back to the airport and deal with it. This was 2010, so the iPad was still a pretty hot commodity then; I assumed it wouldn’t be found and gone forever. By the time morning rolled around, I got an email from an employee that worked at Delta Beijing that asked if I had left an iPad. Shocked, I replied back to him and told him YES it was mine. We arranged for me to pick it up that day, so there was a happy ending there. When I picked it up, I asked him how he got my email address. His answer: “I turned on the iPad and looked at the email address.” Well then..
The second lost iPad
The second one was lost a couple of days ago on my Cathay Pacific first class flight from LAX to HKG. My wife had given me the iPad when we boarded, and I stowed it in the magazines rack in my seat. Well, since I never used it on the flight, when we were deboarding, I never even bothered to check if I left anything in there. To make matters worse, I didn’t realize I left it until 3 days later when we were packing up from the hotel in Hong Kong. As I’m writing this, I’ve tweeted both CX and CXUS to see if they can help me find it. I also stopped by the CX airline services desk at HKG, and the guy looked through the computer and told me no iPads were found on my flight. I even logged onto ‘find my iphone,’ but it just says the iPad is offline. It’s safe to say that unless the Twitter team with CX can pull off a miracle, this second iPad is gone forever. No brother orange story for me.
Lesson Learned
Always check your seat back when you are de-boarding even if you think you didn’t put anything in there. Also, set up ‘find my iphone’ on your iOS device. And maybe most important of all – set your lock screen wallpaper to a page that says something like, “If found, please call or email xxxx.”
Better yet, stop putting things in the seat-back pocket. 🙂
Well where am I supposed to put my ipad for 12 hrs?
You don’t have a small bag with you — your “personal item”?
I’m dead serious, from personal experience (albeit with much less expensive items) I’ve learned to put things back in my bag — never the seat pocket — never the seat next to me, etc.
My personal item aka backpack is usually overhead or under the seat in front of me. But I hear you though. I may start putting it back instead of in seat pocket.