Airlines are leaving customers in the lurch by shirking or outsourcing responsibility for lost phones, a covert Which? investigation has found.
When Which? surveyed members about their experiences with airlines last year, less than half (48 per cent) of those who had lost a phone on a flight said it had been successfully returned.
To find out how airlines are dealing with lost devices, undercover Which? investigators purchased four iPhones and deliberately left them on flights with four major UK carriers: British Airways, easyJet, Jet2 and Ryanair.
The result? Just two – those lost with Jet2 and Ryanair – were recovered. And the one left on a BA flight was stolen.
Which? researchers took flights with the four airlines between 2 September and 20 October 2024, booking the back seat and ensuring they were the final passengers to disembark the aircraft before leaving their phone in a seat pocket.
In each case, Which? activated Apple’s ‘Find my iPhone’ tracking technology to follow the phones’ journeys, and, to make things even easier for airline staff, remotely set up a message on the lockscreen saying ‘This phone is lost’ along with a number displayed for the finder to call.
While the phones were quickly retrieved from Jet2 and Ryanair, researchers had a vastly different experience with BA – after leaving it on a flight from Larnaca, Cyprus, to London Heathrow.
Which? explained: ‘British Airways, like all four airlines we tested, effectively leaves its lost property management to a third party – in BA’s case, Smarte Carte.
To find out how airlines are dealing with lost devices, undercover Which? investigators purchased four iPhones and deliberately left them on flights with four major UK carriers: British Airways , easyJet, Jet2 and Ryanair (stock image)
Which? researchers left a phone on a BA flight from Larnaca, Cyprus, to London Heathrow. The phone subsequently ended up in a cottage 15 miles from the airport and was never retrieved
‘Even immediately after the phone had been left behind – when tracking still showed it to be on or near the plane – we were unable to deal with BA directly.
‘Instead, we were directed to Smarte Carte, where we were able to browse a list online of 36 lost phones at Heathrow.
‘However, the phone had not been recovered and was not listed.’
Rather than being sent to BA’s reclaim facility, a day later, Which? researchers claim they could see that their phone had moved location to a cottage just a short drive from Windsor Castle, 15 miles from Heathrow.
Which? said it reported this to the police, who gave them a crime reference number, and ‘confirmed the address was not linked to anyone working at Heathrow’.
Officers then paid a visit to the cottage and spoke to the residents, but by this time the phone had stopped broadcasting its location.
‘It had either been switched off, or the battery had died – and the phone was not recovered,’ Which? remarked.
The police, Which? said, ‘noted that if a stolen phone is currently broadcasting its position they can, in some circumstances, knock on the door – but may not always do this if contact has been lost’.
Which? researchers left a phone on an easyJet flight from Nice to London Luton Airport, and never got it back, despite registering it with the airline’s third-party baggage handler, Menzies
Which? revealed that it had a similar experience with easyJet, after researchers left a phone on a flight from Nice, France, to London Luton Airport.
It explained: ‘We were unable to speak to anyone at the airline who could help. Instead, easyJet directed us to their baggage handler Menzies, who told us to register the item as lost on another third-party website.
‘After registering, a confirmation email was promised – but none arrived.’
Which? continued: ‘EasyJet’s website says items not claimed within 24 hours are passed to the airport’s lost property office, but upon enquiring, Luton Airport told us it doesn’t handle items left on planes.
‘Like BA, easyJet didn’t offer any further advice or help in finding the phone.’
Which? said the ‘Find My iPhone’ tracking didn’t work on the phone left on the easyJet plane, which meant it couldn’t be remotely located.
The consumer group added: ‘We never received any communication from airline or airport staff to indicate the phone had been found, and the phone was never recovered.’
Which? researchers describe their experience with Jet2 as ‘more positive’ – although they had to pay a fee to retrieve their item.
They added: ‘As with other airlines, we were told to contact a third party after “losing” a phone on a flight from Alicante, Spain, to Birmingham, UK – in this case the airport’s lost property office.
‘Yet positively, a day after reporting the phone missing, we received an email saying it had been found. The only catch was the requirement to pay a fee of £27 to claim it back.’
The final phone Which? abandoned was on a Ryanair flight from Malta to Stansted.
The researchers say: ‘Though Ryanair asserts planes are cleaned on every turnaround, the phone was somehow missed after we disembarked in London – with Find My iPhone showing it made it from Stansted to its next stop in Bari, Italy, before being spotted.
‘At Bari airport, a kindly airport employee phoned to say they’d found it – and it was couriered back for a €60/£50-fee.’
Rory Boland, Editor of Which? Travel, added: ‘These days, a phone is far from just a phone – it’s your wallet, photo album, and when you’re flying, it’s more often than not your boarding pass, too. When passengers lose something so vital, you would expect airlines to have systems in place to quickly and easily return it to you, but when we tried misplacing our own phones, we found this was too often not the case.
‘Frustratingly, in the vital first few hours after an item is lost, there’s no way of getting in touch with the airline to help.
‘Even if you can see it’s still on the plane, you’ll be directed to airport staff or a third-party company.
‘How hard can it be for airlines, who have staff onboard, to organise for lost items to be handed in and secured so that their customers are reunited?
‘As it stands, most carriers won’t even pick up the phone to help.’
The final phone Which? abandoned was on a Ryanair flight from Malta to Stansted. The device was eventually returned
A spokesperson for British Airways told Which?: ‘Our crews remind customers upon arrival at their destination to check they have all their belongings before leaving the aircraft.
‘In the unlikely event that belongings are left behind, we follow a process managed by Heathrow Airport and their third-party supplier, Smarte Carte, like other airlines at the airport.’
Smarte Carte did not provide a comment for publication and directed Which? to the airline.
A spokesperson for easyJet told Which?: ‘We have procedures in place to reunite customers with items they may have left behind when they are found on board or handed in and, unfortunately, this item wasn’t found onboard or handed in.’
Ryanair told Which? that, like other airlines, it does not accept any responsibility for lost property that has not been placed in Ryanair’s possession or safekeeping. This is different from checked bags, which are Ryanair’s responsibility to return when lost. It said that all lost property identified by crews on turnarounds is handed to the lost property office at each airport, which is operated either by the airport or a contractor. In this case, the lost property was discovered in Bari and was handed to the lost property office there.
