- A US passenger took a 96-hour round trip to Germany to collect his lost luggage.
- The traveler had left Apple AirTags in the bags that showed they were in Dusseldorf, Germany.
- He described his efforts to get the bags back as "pretty much just screaming into the abyss."
A US passenger took a 96-hour round trip to Germany to collect his lost luggage after Apple AirTags showed the bags were in the city of Dusseldorf.
Cameron Hopkins and his family had their luggage lost on a flight to Krakow, Poland, during a lengthy trip to Europe in June, according to the travel website The Points Guy.
After the family's Lufthansa flight from Venice to Poland was canceled, Hopkins spent $900 booking the four of them onto a Eurowings flight that included a stop, but no plane transfer in Dusseldorf Airport in Germany, per The Points Guy.
After landing in Krakow, Hopkins told the travel website: "We get there, and half the people on the plane get their luggage — and half don't."
Hopkins' bags had been taken off the plane during the stop in Dusseldorf, Apple AirTags packed in the luggage showed, he told The Points Guy.
The family were left to watch frustrated as the bags did not move for weeks, The Points Guy added.
"It's having an itch you can't scratch," Hopkins said. "It's madness."
After arriving back in the US, Hopkins and his girlfriend waited another five days for their bags to be returned until eventually taking matters into their own hands. On July 3, Hopkins traveled back to Germany to collect the bags himself.
He said that despite knowing the location of the bags, airline customer service was unhelpful.
"It's pretty much just screaming into the abyss," he said.
Hopkins flew back to Europe on a flight from Las Vegas to Dusseldorf with a stop in Frankfurt, Germany.
Unfortunately, the second leg of his trip also got hit with travel disruptions and he had to complete the last part of the journey by rail.
When he finally arrived in Dusseldorf, he was shown to several lost luggage rooms where he was left to comb through piles of lost baggage that he described as smelling "horrible."
After managing to track down his family's four suitcases, he dropped some off at his girlfriend's parents in Poland and traveled back to the US with the rest.