An American man flew 1,100 miles from Costa Rica to Miami to pick up his luggage after it was sent to the wrong airport.
Robert Gentel, a drone-racing enthusiast who lives in Costa Rica, told Insider the weeks-long saga had begun on 15 June.
He was set to fly with American Airlines from San Antonio, Texas to his home in Santa Ana, Costa Rica, with a layover in Miami.
The two bags he checked in for the flight contained thousands of dollars of drone gear, as he had just taken part in the 2022 MultiGP International Open drone race in Indiana.
But after he had checked in his bags, Mr Gentel’s flight to Miami was cancelled. The airline quickly rebooked him on United Airlines flights to Houston and then on to Costa Rica on 16 June.
When he returned to the airport the next day, he checked with American Airlines about his luggage and was informed that they were on their way.
However, he soon found out they were making their way to Miami, no longer his connection point - he could see their location thanks to the GPS-tracking Apple AirTags he had attached to the bags.
Mr Gentel made it back to Costa Rica on the new flights, but spent the best part of a day communicating back and forth with his original and eventual airlines, trying to locate the luggage.
After a few days, one of Mr Gentel’s two bags was eventually sent to Costa Rica, but the other remained stuck in Miami.
“With each day that was passing, I was more and more concerned that the luggage would not make it to me and would eventually be lost for good,” he told Insider.
A few days later, the bag had still not made its way back, so Mr Gentel decided to fly from Costa Rica to Miami on 20 June to collect the bag himself, booking most of the flights with credit card points
In Miami, he said, he handed his baggage tag to the person at the storage room.
“The guy looking for it in the storage room said it was not on the rack it was supposed to be on, so I used the AirTag to locate it on the rack next to it,” he said.
Instead of checking the bags in again for the flight home, Mr Gentel decided to unpack his valuable belongings and carried the items in his cabin bags.
Many airlines and airports have been dealing with a backlog of lost luggage during the summer travel season, as travel demand returns to pre-pandemic levels.
In July, another American man had a similar experience to Mr Gentel when he decided to travel from the US to Germany to retrieve his missing suitcases.
Tracking them down using GPS tags, Cameron Hopkins was able to locate his missing bags after he arrived back home following a trip to Europe.
Meanwhile in Australia, one man filmed himself storming the luggage offices of Melbourne Airport after his GPS bag tag alerted him to its location — weeks after his case was lost in transit.
Last month, a Delta Air Lines plane flew from London to Detroit with 1,000 pieces of missing luggage belonging to passengers who had recently travelled through Heathrow, and no passengers were on board.
