‘Relieved, frustrated, annoyed’: Ontario woman’s luggage returned after it was allegedly donated to charity

A Cambridge woman’s luggage has finally been returned to her, more than four months after she flew home from her honeymoon, and after it was allegedly donated to a charity by one of Air Canada’s third-party luggage-handlers.

“I just got my bag,” Nakita Rees, of Cambridge, told CP24 Monday afternoon.

“[I feel] relieved – everything’s in there – but also, it still almost frustrates me more.”

Rees described her baggage ordeal in a now-viral TikTok video that has over a million views.

Rees told CTV News Kitchener that she and her husband returned to Pearson airport from their honeymoon in Greece on Sept. 10 on a connecting flight from Montreal.

Rees says she collected her bag at the airport, but her husband’s was nowhere to be found.

“When we got to Toronto, my baggage was there but my husband's was not. So we did all we needed to do; our due diligence; filling out the report and contacting Air Canada,” Rees said.

“Luckily, we had an AirTag.”

Rees said that by viewing the AirTag location online, she and her husband watched the luggage travel from Montreal to a public storage facility in Etobicoke 31 days after they arrived home.

She say that’s where the bag has been for the last four months.

“I have sent Air Canada numerous emails with screenshots, asking them why it’s there and what’s going on,” she said.

“We’ve gone back to Pearson to speak with a manager who gave us the ‘low-down’ on how the processing works and the internal policy on how long they have to keep bags for.”

But, Rees says, she heard nothing from Air Canada after repeated attempts to contact them about the missing bag.

In a statement, Air Canada said that they were unable to determine where the bag was and that Rees had been given the legally specified maximum compensation of around $2,300 in October.

The airline says that when Rees and her husband were travelling, in late summer, airlines across the country were still recovering from pandemic-related disruptions to the air travel industry.

“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, it was designated as unclaimed, and we moved to compensate the customer,” the statement read.

“Consistent with IATA policy and other carrier practices, 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.”

Rees says that after she realized Air Canada was not going to help her find the missing luggage, she and her husband went directly to the storage facility where her bag was being held, according to the location of her AirTag.

She said they found a storage unit full of luggage, but had no way of gaining access to it, so they sought help from Toronto police, who eventually obtained a warrant and accessed the unit late last week.

“[Police] opened the unit last week and found about 500 bags. At first, Air Canada said that it was owned by a third-party baggage-handler,” Rees said.

“Then, after it was investigated and opened, they said it was run or owned by a charity.”

Rees has yet to see the police report, so she doesn’t know the name of the charity that reportedly owns the storage unit, but says she intends to find out.

Rees says she doesn’t believe Air Canada ever properly processed her husband’s bag and that they simply gave up on it before passing it on to the third-party luggage-handler.

“We think it was never actually fully processed because the process of finding baggage that doesn’t have a tag on it is pretty lengthy and the description I put in the report was very much detailed to the point that it wouldn’t match up with many other pieces of luggage, so it should have been easily matched to who we are,” she said.

Air Canada’s statement went on to say that they recommend customers always put personal contact information inside their baggage, like a business card, in the event that a baggage tag is disconnected.

“While our baggage delivery rate is typically in the high 90th percentile, it does occur occasionally that bags are delayed and, in some instances, such as this, bags are not returned because tags become disconnected during the journey,” the statement read.

Rees says despite having her husband’s bag returned and being compensated by Air Canada, she believes the airline needs to be held accountable to keep this from happening to other people.

“Be accountable. You’re a massive national airline,” she said.

“Your tickets are the most expensive. People buy and fly with Air Canada because we trust them. How can you trust them when they are, in my opinion, wrongfully donating luggage that they clearly could figure out whose it is?”

Rees also says airlines need to update their baggage policies in order to work with customers who use AirTags.

“Airlines need to understand that AirTags are here for a reason; to help us find our lost property,” she says.

“They need to account for that and allow passengers to show proof of where it is and hopefully go retrieve it themselves or get someone on their team to retrieve it for them.”