A determined woman who left her AirPods on her seat as she got off the plane traced them to the HOME of a United Airline worker after the employee told her she couldn’t get them back herself
- Alisabeth Hayden was told she couldn’t get her AirPods back after she left them in her jean jacket on the back of a United Airlines plane.
- An employee recovered the jacket, but when she put it in her pocket the $250 devices were missing.
- Hayden managed to track them to the employee’s home using his geo-tracking feature.
A woman who left her AirPods on a flight and was told she couldn’t get them back has revealed that she tracked them to the home of an airport employee.
Alisabeth Hayden claims the worker promised to bring back the expensive gadgets, which were in her jean jacket, but failed to do so.
the determined passengerof washington state, it tracked the device’s movements and located it at the worker’s home.
Hayden was flying back from Tokyo on a United Airlines plane where she was visiting her military husband when the incident occurred.
As he was leaving the plane, he noticed that his jacket was missing.
Alisabeth Hayden claims that the United Airlines worker had promised to return the expensive gadgets, but he secretly stole them.
“I realized it even before I got off the plane,” he told CNN.
‘I was the penultimate to get off the plane, so I asked the flight attendant if I could go look for him.
“He said no, that federal law required me to get off the plane and stand next to it, where the strollers are taken. He was tired, he said he would bring it to me, I said ok.
He returned her jacket and boarded her next flight to Seattle, at which point she realized the pockets had been opened and the AirPods were missing.
But AirPods have a feature that allows users to track them from their phone where they are.
Hayden traced them to a ‘United Cargo’ which was located on the cargo side of the airline where passengers do not sit.
He watched as the device moved through various terminals and then to a residential address in San Mateo.
The address was later matched to that of a contractor employed by the airport who worked to load food onto the plane.
“I’m a diligent person and I tracked all the way from San Francisco to Seattle, taking screenshots all the time,” he said.
“I live an hour from Seattle, and once I got home, I was still taking screenshots.”
Meanwhile, he fought with United to get the devices back, but ran into trouble.
He emailed every United Airlines executive he could find and repeatedly posted about the debacle on his Facebook page.
“I looked for every avenue I could find, used every possible form of communication, and got the same answer: ‘I’m sorry this happened to you,'” he said.


Hayden tracked down the airpods and eventually discovered that they were at the United Airlines worker’s home.

Hayden eventually returned the AirPods to her after getting the police involved.
It eventually involved the police who brought the employee in for questioning. He denied having the devices.
He later said that they had been given to him by one of the airport cleaners.
After 12 days of persecution, the devices were finally returned to him.
United told CNN the matter had been turned over to police.
It added: “United Airlines holds our suppliers to the highest standards and we are working with local authorities in their investigation of this matter.”