Update: American found this reader’s iPhone and is sending it back.
Mitch shared a story of how he lost his iPhone right in front of his own eyes this week while flying first class on American Airlines from Los Angeles to New York JFK.
He reports that he was sitting behind Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones.
Upon a rough landing my iphone falls from my lap onto the floor and slides under Douglas’ seat in front of me. I notify the FA who says this happens all the time in these First Class seats on transcons and she is thinking of making an announcement moving forward.
She calls mechanics while I wait. We can’t reach the phone. Mechanics come. They can see the phone with a flash light and can poke it with a stick but can’t get it out. After about 40 mins they give up (it was 11pm local time).
The very nice flight attendants said it happens all the time, you just go down to baggage and file a claim. I handed out the American Airlines appreciation slips to them all. Then asked if I should get their names or documentation? They said no such documentation for this exists, but they’d call down to baggage to let them know to expect me.
You know the ending of the story. Baggage claim said- “we don’t file claims for lost items.” I explained it wasn’t “lost.” They didn’t care.
I went upstairs to customer service and met some nice managers — but all said, ‘my hands are tied,’ we don’t have a procedure for this. They even called maintenance who confirmed the story [about where the iPhone was lost], but said they had no documentation. So after two hours I left.
It’s incredibly frustrating to lose your phone — to see it in front of you but have no way to get it. Eventually American Airlines will find itself in possession of the phone. And Mitch was told there’s no procedure to reunite him with it.
I thought through several possibilities to recoup this loss.
- Credit card purchase protection Unfortunately the phone isn’t new enough.
- Homeowners insurance but his deductible is too high.
He went and replaced his phone at an all-in cost of $900. Even though his original iPhone is out there. In fact, it may be under your seat right now.
Another A321 rough landing.
What a maddening story.
Even if he had purchase insurance, the company might have allowed themselves wiggle room. My husband’s phone vanished while on an AS flight. He realized it on arrival but the airline and he had no success finding it. It was within the 90 insured period for loss. AMEX denied his claim after a week or so, saying that they do not cover losses on common carriers. Ka-ching, $600 lost.
This doesn’t surprise me one bit. AA under Parker continues to be a disaster. If it truly happens all the time there should be a procedure in place to deal with it. This was a first class passenger and I am sure they could have found a way to lift the seat. Why should someone have to spend $900 for a replacement phone when the phone was visible to the AA mechanic. Probably just a mechanic who wanted to go home since it was 11PM in NYC.
In 2014 the first week in May I was on a first class flight from Dallas to San Francisco with my husband.
While awaiting takeoff I took off my wedding ring and accidentally dropped it between our seats, it fell through and onto the flooring.
I was panicked, a male flite attendant asked us what was wrong, he proceeded to crawl under the seat with a flash lite , got his white shirt dirty! and after 10-15 minutes of jiggling and fishing with pens ect he eventually retrieved my ring. I was elated, so grateful and thankful he was aboard.
Must’ve been a real rough landing since a plane lands nose pitched up
This almost happened to me (not on an airline, but I’ll keep the story short), except I was fortunate to retrieve my phone after an hour or two.
Suggestion: get a rubbery case that improves friction between your phone and any surfaces on which it rests.
Honestly. Blaming Doug Parker for something that happened on an AA branded plane? ‘Happens all the time’ means pre-AA/US merger time. Puh-leez.
My glasses went under an Envoy class seat on a US Airways flight from PHL-MAN several years ago. The US Airways flight attendant, after trying multiple items, finally emerged from the galley with a spatula. A little more crawling around and shining of flashlights, and the glasses were retrieved.
So, maybe it’s not Dougie’s fault after all. Maybe it’s an American Airlines flight attendant issue? Or it could be the seats? If I recall there has been lots of moaning and groaning over the fact that US Airways planes business/first domestic seats are so crappy. Oh, the irony of it all 😉
Had it been one of those seats… well, whose to know?
It was a new A321 not old USAir metal. The flight attendant told the passenger it’s a common occurrence. The buck stops with senior management if they know people are experiencing this issue particularly in first class. You were fortunate that your flight attendant put in an extra effort to retrieve your glasses. In this case it cost the passenger $900. which is a total waste considering they knew where the phone was located and should have easily been able to retrieve it by the time the plane departed the next morning. Just another instance of an airline where nobody seems to care.
what exactly does michael douglas have to do with this story (other than serving as click-bait?)
i have been a reader of your blog for many years and i am extremely disappointed with that, gary.
Would have thought people as famous as Michael Douglas and CZJ would fly private rather than rub shoulders with the hoi polloi on a commercial flight.
Who cares what the title was? It’s about lazy AA employees and management who really didn’t care that one of their premium customers had to go spend $900 for a new phone just because their maintenance people couldn’t figure out how to get underneath the seat. They probably had more than 10 hours to figure this out while the plane sat on the ground. This is what the future holds for AA.
In 2010 after flying from the US to AU on Delta for my honeymoon I noticed my inexpensive titanium wedding ring, which I had been fiddling with, was not on my finger. Flight crew seemed barely interested as I freaked out. I offered to leave contact info but like Mitch they have no procedure to reunite you with lost items. After 15 hours in coach I had no more resolve so we left and bought a new ring in Katoomba.
As usual, it is always someone else’s fault. If people would stop messing with their personal belongings when they should be put away or wearing them they would still have them.
Phones get lost or broken all the time. If the pax can’t afford $900 to replace it, they should have bought a lesser phone or bought the insurance. No sympathy there.
The AA FA who said to go to baggage services should get a speaking to once the pax writes in with the specific flight details. Sloppy on the FA’s part.
@Mark – You think AA leaves their 321-Ts on the ground for ten hours a day?
How do I stop this “Your computer is infected! Call this # now!” from popping up on this site?!
@Rob P – same thing has been happening sporadically to me on Gary’s blog for several weeks now
Let this be a lesson to those who can’t wait to get onto the ground to start making phone calls! Fly F, you can afford another $900 phone. Too cheap to pay insurance with a low enough deductible, maybe you shouldn’t be flying F. A tweet to AA would have gotten someone on the case from HQ customer service and the phone returned when a real maintenance guy was dispatched to retrieve it. Next day at most. No sympathy here. Keep your iPhone in your carry-on or pocket until the plane is off the runway and taxiing. (And a $5 rubber case for the iPhone is the best protection, as noted it won’t slip under seats and provides enough protection that the glass is unlikely to break either.) BTW would the phone not slide out when the plane takes off the next morning?
I have now had my phone fall into the cracks of the business class seat…twice. I cannot claim it wasn’t my fault, but that’s not the point. Both times, after landing, and EVERY passenger disembarking, maintenance came on board to disassemble the seat. Even the captain waited to make sure I received my phone. And both times (the first took 39 minutes) American maintenance and FA’s came through. Every challenging situation, in every corporate environment today, is solved either by someone with personal integrity who cares to follow through on the requirement (or beyond) of their job or someone who has an axe to grind with their employer and doesnt give a rats a– about the effect on the corporations customer. Can’t blame anyone but ourselves as we’ve become a “me, me, me” society. And we accept and approve of it every day.
@Billy… Sorry the plane was on the ground for 7 hours. I guess 7 hours wasn’t long enough to have maintenance locate it. All these comments about affordability are not the point. It was an accident that the phone fell during a rough landing. What’s the difference if the person could afford a new phone or not? If AA has this problem on a regular basis with this particular aircraft and seat they should come up with a solution. Why repeat the same problem over and over again for passengers and also for the flight crew who have to try and find the phones when there is probably an easy fix? They fly and land planes automatically yet they can’t lift a seat? Just plain stupid. It reminds me of my flights in first class on United from SFO to HKG which I take quite frequently. Every time I get onboard the flight attendant tells me not to order the seafood pasta dish because people always complain about it. So once I asked the flight attendant have you told senior management about all the complaints and she said yes we tell them all the time but they never listen. After two years the stupid seafood pasta is still on the menu and they still remind me every time I get onboard not to order it. These airlines have the same stupid mentality with their management. Little things can make a big impact on your experience. A little kindness or extra effort can go along way especially with a premium traveler. Is it any wonder why the Asian & Middle East airlines are kicking their butt.
what does this have to do with michael douglas?
I’m not mad at American. I’m mad at Michael Douglas.
The C and F seats on AA’s A321T fleet are very nice but very dangerous for phones.
I lost my phone in one of their C seats too but was lucky enough to be able to retreive it myself by disassembling most of the seat myself inflight.
After that experience I leave the phone in my pocket on those flights.
While a stretch they could try filing a products liability claim with the seat manufacturer. Its well documented that these seats are dangerous for phones and the FA’S I’ve run into give warnings about them all the time.
@Rob P I’m going to pull ads back down, I got several reports yesterday. I had been told the problem was fixed..
Gary,
Yeah. This article caught my attention because of Michael Douglas.
@Gary, datapoint – it’s 5:47 a.m. on Thursday and that #$@#$ popup happened for me. I realize it’s only been a short time since you posted about it. Great blog otherwise….
Thank you, Gary for checking on those pop-ups!
Guess I’ll never have this problem with my old flip Kyocera that will never fall in a crack and has been dropped many a time without damage. When it does give up the ghost I will mourn its $15 cost, but suppose I can afford to replace it given the monthly Virgin Mobile fee is only $20, or less using top up cards purchased with discounted retailer cards from firms like Cardpool. As Capital One says – after paying for your smartphone, what’s left in your wallet? Retro rules, Apple drools!
Agree with @ben senise and others. What does Michael Douglas have to do with AA and the phone and the lack of procedure? Very, very confused.
Oh, wait, I know why it is mentioned.
Reasons: 1) get people on the fence to click on the post and 2) when in doubt, always try to make the post longer, not shorter. Longer, wordier posts are preferable.
@RobP @DaveS (and anyone else annoyed by pop-ups). Download AdBlock Plus. Free, and you don’t have to worry about them again!
I’m going to get these pulled back down.
@DaveS – the folks I need to help me with this don’t work overnight, I can’t fix it myself (don’t have access). They work on Mountain time
I have been on an AA 321 when they made an announcement about this.
I understand that AA has got to get the plane back into the air, but a few things.
1. This problem has been going on for over a year. Isn’t there some sort of shielding/duct tape that can stop this problem from happening.
2. There should be a way to at least record your info so that if they find the phone they can return it to you.
3. I don’t think they should hold up the flight, but at the end of the day they should send a mechanic in and send the guy his phone back. Even if they want to charge a “phone retrieval fee”
Chewing gum on a stick = Iphone retrieval tool.
This is a timely post, in that I just got back to the USA from Asia on an AA flight with a similar issue.
I dropped my watch into the mechanism of a business class seat (knocked it out of the holder on the side of the seat). The only way to get it out was to sight it with a flashlight and then reach in up to my shoulder, and fumble around in the right general area to find it. You have to trust that no one will touch the seat controls and take your arm off while this is happening. I can understand why a mechanic might not risk that sort of harm for a phone!
I imagine that this sort of thing probably happens frequently (there was other stuff inside the seat); probably the airlines do not want to take on the additional aggravation of trying to track who belongs to what lost stuff.
I have also left phones on aircraft in the seat back (now they make announcements about this to remind sleepy passengers to collect their belongings). I could describe to customer service exactly where the phone was (which seat), before the aircraft had been turned, but they were unable to to reunite me with my phone. The next time it happened, I asked a gate agent to let me back on the plane after the aircraft was fully deplaned to retrieve the phone (I understand that they are not supposed to let passengers do that, but they let me do it anyway).
“And American Wouldn’t Help to Return It.” didn’t quite a few American employees try to help? More like they tried but were unable to return it which is a far cry from will not help.
I lost an earring and thought it had gotten stuck in the Bose headphone they collect an hour before landing on an AA first international flight a few years ago. Pre-Parker. The F/A refused to look for it, claimed the headphones were locked up. There was plenty of time before landing. So the lack of willingness is not really new.
Just shows you how awful these US airlines like AA & UA are when it comes to customer service. It is NON existent and not saying just becos of this report.
For me, I don’t fly domestic that frequently and I fly coach cos it makes zero sense using extra miles for just a 2 or few hrs flight.
I fly internationally and I ALWAYS AVOID US BASED AIRLINES like UA & AA. They are horrible in everything.
For domestic, it is understandable that you hardly have foreign carriers flying domestic.
Love my country but not these airlines.
Years ago, a top manager at AA told me that the baggage department at their JFK operation is “a law unto themselves”. They answer to absolutely nobody. Lost your phone? Tough. Need to offload a bag because of a sick passenger? Buzz off, we’re on a lunch break. I feel bad for Mitch, but his story doesn’t surprise me a bit.
I was flying first class on BA to Australia a couple of years ago. They insisted that we deplane in Singapore to refuel. When I got back on I found that someone in the cleaning crew had stolen my cashmere sweater. I complained and the stewardess told me that they had arranged for someone to meet me at the gate in Melbourne and take my claim. When I got off the plane and asked where the representative was they basically laughed at me. Don’t underestimate how little the aircrew care about helping the passengers.
For what it is worth Gary, This site and a couple other travel pages similar to yours seem to be badly infected. After visiting them I have had to run scans on my computer just last night again and finally had to invest in a full blown virus and malware cleaning package to really do the job. Some of your ads must be “dirty” Please advise your IT helpers about this. Thanks!
On Aug. 13 I flew LH FRA-ORD, 5pm flight in seat 1A of the 747-8 and found an iPhone (with security lock code set) in a closed cubby under the window. I gave it to the flight attendant who said she would try to reunite it with its owner- I hope LH was able to do so.
@Carl – I’ve asked for network ads to be taken down completely and that should be accomplished within 30 minutes
Clickbait
@Rob P – same thing has been happening sporadically to me on Gary’s blog for several weeks now
Same here, this website is INFECTED
Back to the phone now. Was everyone here born with a silver spoon in their mouth? Did no one learn anything from their dad’s growing up? My dad would have be working having me holding the flashlight while he had a Kool cigarette hanging from his mouth while working on something with a screw driver yelling at me to hold the $%#$% flashlight still. I learned how to fix a lot of stuff by watching him.
#1 get a ruler (yard stick)
#2 get duck tape (used to secure passenger in seat)
#3 attach duck tape to end of ruler
#4 stick ruler with duck tape at end under seat and touch phone
#5 pull all out from under seat!
Mission done .
All network ads have been removed.
Here was my experience losing and getting back my phone on British Airways:
This was my first time ever flying in First Class. LHR-JFK. I got a great window seat and was very excited. I took my phone out of my pocket and put it on the flat surface next to the window. The stewardess came buy to offer me a drink. As I was reaching for the drink I accidentally bumped my phone and it slid off the flat surface into the gap between the flat surface and the wall. The plane was still on the ground and had not taken off at all. It was still at the gate loading passengers.
The stewardess said that unfortunately I would have to change my seat because having a phone under my seat was a fire hazard and that they would have and engineer open the seat when we arrived at JFK. I was not happy about this. The purser said that they will send a message to JFK to have an engineer waiting for us when we land to open up the seat.
When we landed unfortunately the engineers were not at the gate because they had the higher priority of taking care of some external issues. The crew said they could not let me wait on the plane for the engineer and I had to get off. They got my wife’s phone number and said they would call me once they got my phone.
Before disembarking the stewardess told the First Officer about what happened. He said there was an electronic compartment under the first class cabin and he would climb down there to see if he could get my phone.
So I walked off the plane and went to immigration. Needless to say I felt very unhappy about what had happened but knew there was nothing that I could do.
After getting through immigration I heard my name over the public address system asking me to go to the British Airways counter. As I started to walk toward the BA counter one of the stewardess came running up to me with a smile telling me that the First Officer was able to get my phone from the compartment under the First Class cabin. I saw the First Officer walking to me and he personally handed me my phone.
Needless to say I was very happy with what they did for me. The entire crew was very helpful, kind, and considerate during this entire frustrating service. I give the crew an A+ for the quality of service that they gave me and especially appreciate the First Officer going out of his way to help me get my phone back.
Lesson learned: from now on, the first thing I will do when sitting down is to look for any gaps where a phone or any thin or small item can slip through. Then if possible I will close/fill it with a magazine,paper, or whatever is available to close the gap.
I will bring a small roll of tape on board to cover any openings/ gaps. Never again will this happen to me.
I think the bigger problem here is that people are paying $900 for a phone. A PHONE?!?!