A woman flying Spirit Airlines out of Fort Lauderdale left a small Louis Vuitton purse on the Gate F6 counter before boarding her flight to Austin. Another passenger found it and turned it into the agents working the gate. Surveillance video shows a gate agent transferring the contents of the purse into another bag, and another agent taking the purse and putting it into her own backpack.
Cameras showed both agents leaving the area with the purse still in that second agent’s backpack. Both were arrested and charged with petit theft.
A Spirit Airlines flight attendant presciently went viral, warning passengers about flying Spirit with designer bags: ‘you can afford a Gucci bag but you can’t afford to fly Delta?’
We don’t care if it’s a Gucci bag. It goes under the seat. Especially if it’s a fake Gucci bag. We all know it’s a fake because once we reach an altitude of 10,000 feet, the G’s will fall off. You will arrive in Fort Lauderdale with an Ucci bag.
And a Southwest Airlines flight attendant famously pointed out about these bags, “If they were real, you wouldn’t be flying Southwest to begin with.” That goes double for Spirit!
Theft inside an airport is collossally stupid. There are cameras everywhere, and more law enforcement on property at a major hub than almost anywhere else. You’ll frequently find TSA, local police, FBI, DEA, customs and other agencies on-site.
Nonetheless, people keep doing it.
- A passenger filmed a baggage handler stealing a birthday present out of their luggage. An American Airlines passenger’s lost luggage turned up on Facebook marketplace.
- A TSA screener stole a passenger’s $7,000 watch and then destroyed it, hoping to avoid getting caught. Another screener stole a CNN camera, posted it to eBay, but forget to remove the CNN sticker first.
- Another TSA employee slipped an iPad out of a suitcase into his pants and that led to getting caught with $50,000 in electronics taken from passenger luggage. There’s literally video at the checkpoints, so you can watch these screeners stealing from passengers on tape.
At least when Delta cleaning crew stole a backpack a passenger left on a plane they might have figured they were doing the actual theft without cameras watching.
Spirit Airlines is in its second bankruptcy in a matter of months, though, so maybe the gate agents here were thinking about their uncertain career prospects rather then legal jeopardy.
Proving the help can be as bad as the passengers.
“There’s video at the TCA checkpoints”
Apparency when TSA does something wrong (as happened to me at JFK) all of a sudden the cameras weren’t working.
Bet it was fake.
I like the use of “petit theft”. You probably meant to say petty theft. In some states “petty theft” is defined as less than a certain amount of money. In CA it is $ 950. A real LV bag is probably more than “petty theft”.
The idea that people with “expensive” handbags wouldn’t be on a Spirit flight is non-sensical.
First, there’s a very wide wealth gap between “one aspirational $5k purse” and “flying private”.
Second, sometimes you just gotta take the airline that offers the non-stop, and oftentimes that’s going to be Spirit, Frontier, or Southwest (although Southwest doesn’t seem to be any less expensive than legacy carriers these days.)
@Calidude “petit theft” is correct as written in the code in many jurisdictions, including the Florida statute applicable here. #French
“Petit theft” is running rampant at these airports!
@AZTravelGuy: thank you for clarifying.
I left a Filson coat on a United flight at LaGuardia. Provided United w/ the seat number. No go, useless email responses. My wife subsequently left a coat at the United Club in San Fran. Provided info was to what club and where. Nothing. Obviously it is on us to have left items, but on United that anything left will be stolen.
Welp, they were flying from FLL… aka Fraud Liquor-dale, as the locals affectionately refer to it as.