Airports and the things we forget when we fly

Absent minded travellers often leave stuff behind at airports. Picture iStock Mild and wild expletives are sometimes not enough to express what we feel like when we forget stuff. Not only does it usually mean a goodbye and goodnight kiss to our possessions forever, but the sheer stupidity of accidental neglect is as frustrating.

Travelling makes it worse. The f-word only partly describes the frustration when realising that your sunglasses are not on your face and your ID book is missing in action somewhere between the boarding gate and check-in. At some point you were yakking on your phone, chilled in a lounge or parked off in a coffee shop, but where in the universe did you leave your parking ticket?

A new National Geographic series calledInside Airport Lost and Found, shares some bizarre tales of what people leave behind in airports. Whether it’s a prosthetic eyeball or, as the show, shows, taxidermy animals, it’s all somewhat strange and oh so much fun. Not in the least because this time, it wasn’t you that left your whatnots somewhere, but rather, someone else.

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But South African travellers are just as absent minded as their global peers. Locally, said Acsa spokesperson Ofentse Dijoe people most often leave behind identity documents, passports, cellphones and chargers. Liftairline’s Haydn Halim-Henning said that glasses, ID cards, bank cards, driver’s licences and earphones are often left in aircraft, too.

“Since the launch of Lift in 2020, over 460 pairs of glasses were forgotten onboard. A close second is ID cards, with over 240 left behind,” he said. First-time travellers, senior citizens and parents travelling with young children appear more likely to leave items behind, Dijoe said, often due to distraction or managing multiple responsibilities.

Business travellers can also be forgetful. Panic normally sets in most over cellphones, identity documents, passports, tablets, sentimental jewellery, bank cards and medication, said Dijoe. “In one instance, a passenger misplaced an iPhone after stepping away for a smoke break.

In another, a couple was arguing in the terminal and the husband forgot his hand luggage in the terminal,” he added. Halim-Henning said that people most often leave stuff behind when disembarking. “That’s when people are juggling multiple things at once: standing up, pulling bags from overhead bins, checking their phones, collecting jackets, and trying to exit quickly.

Loose items often slip between the cracks. Both Lift and Acsa said that when they discover items left behind, it is logged and handed in centrally. Sometimes, people are tracked down and reunited with their items before they get too far away, Halim-Henning said.

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