An iPhone gets lost onboard a Qantas airplane
He needed the number because his wife had apparently left her iPhone on a Qantas plane. Rugby wrote that thanks to the “Find My” app, he knew that the handset had boarded the plane with his wife, flying from Sydney to Auckland. It then flew back to Sydney, went from Sydney to Honolulu to Sydney, and then flew from Sydney to Auckland to Sydney again.
This iPhone was caught in a Qantas business seat in 2016 and when the battery was punctured, it started an in-flight fire
Meanwhile, the Rugby family was able to follow the phone’s travels and there must have been enough battery life for the phone to continue sending out signals. The device was believed to be stuck in the seat that Mrs. Rugby had been sitting in during the original flight. You would have thought that this would have led Qantas to do whatever was needed to extricate the phone from the chair.
Another member of the community had a good point about how poorly Qantas is cleaning its planes between flights if it couldn’t find the phone. Also, the airline’s security checks between flights are also lacking.
After three round trips, the iPhone finally made it back home
After the phone made three roundtrips and landed in Sydney for the third time, a member of the forum assisted Qantas with the retrieval of the phone. It wasn’t known whether this person was a passenger who had been following the forum or a Qantas employee who is a member of the forum. Regardless, the Rugby’s received a call from a Qantas employee who said that they had the phone and would be taking it to international baggage services.
Mr. Rugby was in Auckland when he heard from Qantas that they had his partner’s iPhone. He picked up the well-traveled device the following week when he returned to Sydney. By the way, leaving your phone on a plane is not an isolated situation. A member of a forum called One Mile At A Time who goes by the name of “JD,” wrote, “Flew MEX-FRA first class (747) a couple of years ago. When I woke up I could not find my iPhone anywhere.”