Valerie Szybala thought she made the right choice when she accepted United Airlines’ offer to deliver her delayed luggage.
That was in the last week of 2022, when bad weather and operational disruptions canceled thousands of flights, most of them on Southwest Airlines. Szybala had just landed at Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC when the United app informed her that the bag was not on her flight from Chicago. It seemed easier to have the bag, packed with souvenirs from a long vacation, delivered straight home by the airline.
After all, she had put an Apple AirTag in her luggage so she could track the bag’s journey. But Szybala could not imagine what came next.
“That’s when the real chaos began,” Szybala told Mashable.
When the tagged bag left the airport on Dec. 29, Szybala said it appeared to be on its way to delivery a few miles away. AirTags are designed to track personal items like wallets and car keys by emitting signals detectable by Apple’s Find My network. (Privacy experts have criticized the device’s ability to track people without their consent, including victims of domestic violence.)
Szybala’s bag never arrived on the 29th. She looked at it further the next day and it seemed to be settling into an apartment complex for the evening.
That’s when she started to worry.
Since the Find My network told her the location of the bag, Szybala decided to go there herself. Thus began a viral Twitter thread on the saga. At the time of writing, the first tweet in this thread has been viewed 15.5 million times.
Szybala’s experience is a cautionary tale about how to trust airlines and their third-party couriers to return delayed or lost luggage — and why a tracking device may just be the leverage travelers need to hold big companies accountable for their practices to pull.
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When Szybala arrived at the apartment complex, she saw and photographed empty suitcases near a dumpster. Panic spread. A text chat with a United customer service representative through the airline’s app left Szybala feeling devastated.
A Screenshot of the exchange shows Szybala asking the representative for clarification as to why her AirTag indicated the bag was in an apartment complex and not a secure distribution center as the representative insisted. The representative, who Szybala could not confirm was human, replied, “Calm down, your bag is with the delivery service.”
“When I thought someone was going to steal bags and maybe empty them, I was like, ‘I have to act,'” she said.
Szybala kept returning to the complex hoping to find her bag, but to no avail. At one point, she watched the bag travel to a McDonald’s.
“ANOTHER UPDATE: My AirTag luggage left McDonalds and returned to the apartment complex where it is being held hostage!” Szybala wrote on Twitter.
As her tweets circulated, Szybala received DMs from people with similar horror stories and inside information on how to handle luggage. Several referred her to a Houston-based company, Wheres My Suitcase (sic), which is used by several airlines. His Yelp page is littered with bad reviews.
Szybala was told by United that she could track her bag on wheresmysuitcase.com, but the site has never updated the location of her belongings. She had no way of reaching the courier service directly.
Szybala also says an industry insider told her the standard procedure is to bring luggage back to the distribution center if it can’t be delivered. What the suitcase in question was doing in an apartment building is still unknown.
On her fourth trip to the complex, Szybala received a text message from the courier service. The delivery man said they delivered the bag to the wrong person in Virginia and needed to pick it up. Given the AirTag details, Szybala doesn’t believe that story – but she got her bag back on Jan. 2, three days after it went missing.
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“It doesn’t seem decent to me,” she said.
When Mashable reached out to United Airlines for comment on the situation, the airline said in an email, “We are working with our baggage supplier to understand the details of this situation.”
United Airlines sent an additional update following the publication of this story: “We have been in touch with this customer to discuss this situation and to confirm that she received her baggage which resulted in this service outage.”
Szybala wrote on Twitter that travelers should consider using a tracking device in their luggage. Without her – and the viral Twitter thread – Szybala said she probably wouldn’t have her bag.
In fact, the holiday trip nightmare seems to have convinced other aviators to do the same. NBC News’ Scott Budman reported Monday that Apple AirTags have become a bestseller on Amazon in the past few days.
Szybala also advised travelers to photograph or inventory their belongings before the flight and to choose to collect delayed or lost bags from the airport rather than have them delivered. Still, she believes United is ultimately responsible for what happens to travelers’ luggage and how the company treats the planes when that happens.
“Obviously this isn’t going to change everything United is doing, but all this attention – the negative press – is certainly the only thing that could lead them to evaluate some of these practices,” Szybala said.
UPDATE: Jan 2, 2023 3:55pm PST This story has been updated with a new statement from United Airlines.