An Air Canada flight approaches for landing at Pearson International Airport in Toronto on March 13, 2019 in a file photo. (REUTERS/Chris Helgren)
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A Cambridge woman has chronicled her months-long process of getting her baggage back from Air Canada after her honeymoon in Greece. She used an AirTag tracker to follow its movements, but Air Canada did not pick it up to return it to her at any of its known locations for months.
Police got involved and told Nakita Rees that one of Air Canada’s third-party luggage-handlers had donated the bag to charity. Rees told CP24 on Monday that it was returned to her after all.
“[I feel] relieved—everything’s in there—but also, it still almost frustrates me more,” she said.
She had described her ordeal on a now-viral TikTok video with more than a million views.
On her way home from her honeymoon in Greece, she and her husband had to recheck their bags in Montreal before flying on to Toronto.
“My bag made it back, my husband’s did not,” she said. They had an Apple AirTag inside the bag so they could find its location.
“We noticed our luggage was moving with our AirTag from the Montreal airport to what we now have learned … [is] a processing centre in Montreal.”
She said it sat there for four months.
“Then we watched our luggage leave on the highway from Montreal to Etobicoke.” Rees happily thought the bag was on the way back to them. “And then it sat there for a month, two months, three months.”
Air Canada did not respond to her many communications, she said. It compensated her for the bag’s loss by an e-transfer, she said. “They didn’t even give me an option to accept that money.”
Rees and her husband asked the police to go to the Etobicoke facility to retrieve their property, CP24 reported. The police reportedly found hundreds of bags there. The police told her the facility was owned by a charity.
Toronto police and Air Canada did not reply to The Epoch Times’ inquiry as of publication.
“Customers whose bags cannot be located are eligible for compensation after 21 days and bags whose ownership cannot be determined can be disposed of after 90 days—something we do through a third-party company, which does make donations to charity,” Air Canada told CP24.
The airline said it compensated Rees the maximum amount, $2,300. It said the industry is “still recovering from pandemic-related disruptions” and “in this particular case, the situation was compounded by the disconnection of the baggage tag at some point on the journey. Despite our best efforts, it was not possible for us to identify the bag’s owner.”
A similar case made headlines earlier this month when a B.C. man’s bag was lost by Air Canada on his way back from Mexico.
Paul Kliffer of Victoria, B.C., followed his bag using an AirTag tracker and saw that it made its way to Madrid, Spain. He tracked it for months after his November trip, he told Global News, and repeatedly contacted Air Canada to show where it was and ask the airline to retrieve it. The airline said it would compensate him for the loss.
Air Canada did not reply to The Epoch Times’ inquiry on that incident.
Transport Minister Omar Alghabra said earlier this month that the government is looking to strengthen the airline passenger bill of rights through legislation that will be introduced in the spring.