Passenger watches lost wallet and AirTag travel to 35 cities on American Airlines plane

Smart AirTags and trackers have become a popular accessory since airlines began allowing them on planes, last year. Photo / Unsplash, Đức Trịnh

There’s one thing worse than losing your wallet on a plane. That’s knowing exactly where your wallet is but being unable to get it back.

An unhappy traveller says he has spent the last month watching his belongings travel the world without him, after forgetting his wallet and an Apple AirTag on an American Airlines plane.

John Lewis the ‘Bad Ass Vegan’ tweeted at the airline explaining his situation.

Lewis said he discovered his wallet was missing after trying to rent a car from Ft Lauderdale Airport, Florida on January 29. His worst fears were confirmed, after seeing the GPS of his wallet’s smart tag was already airborne and flying to a new city.

Talking to Insider Magazine Lewis said that the airline was unable to find the wallet, despite having an exact location on the tag.

“According to them the plane is cleaned after every flight,” said the traveller, but nothing was found.

While the walled was still to be found he counted the locator travelling to no fewer than 35 different US cities.

As a cheeky appeal, the passenger asked in a video if he could have the wallet’s growing air miles added to his account as points.

“The crazier part is I’m watching my wallet get all these miles,” said Lewis.

“Do I get to keep all the miles that my wallet is accumulating?”

He estimated the points alone would be worth a free trip to Belize by now.

Lost hope of wallet reunion

Unfortunately after seeing the funny side of the situation, Lewis saw a couple of charges go through one of the cards in a city that the Airtag was no longer in.

Lewis assumed that the tag must have been left on the plane when the wallet was taken.

“I know it’s not your fault that I left the wallet ( even though that flight was delayed over an hour so I was in a rush to sprint through the airport)” he wrote.

“It’s time to cancel all my cards and get some new IDs,” he tweeted.

The original post which had almost 10,000 views attracted a vast amount of sympathy but most travellers said his missing wallet had nothing to do with the airline.

The passenger assumed that it must have been taken by someone who had access to the plane, between flights.

Not everyone thought it was fair for Lewis to blame airline staff or contractors.

“As a passenger I’ve found 2 wallets, 1 moneyclip, 1 iPad, 3 phones,” read one reply, suggesting that passengers ought to take more responsibility for their belongings.

“I wouldn’t blame the cleaning crew.”

The airline was contacted for comment on the lost property item.

With the recent rise in airlines allowing smart trackers and AirTags on planes, not all missing property stories have an unhappy ending.

At the beginning of the month two passengers were able to track down their long lost luggage, left on a flight from Quebec without contact details.

Nakita Rees and Tom Wilson were able to track down their carry case to a storage facility, after being told it had been “donated to a charity on behalf of Air Canada.”

Rees said in a viral TikTok that everything in the case was intact, including a bottle of wine.