You’ll spend around $3,000 to find your “lost” AirPods.
Lewis Ellis forgot his AirPods on a plane and then discovered they were in a small village in the Himalayas.
Lewis Ellis, 31, from the UK, said he forgot his AirPods when he flew from Bangkok to Doha five months ago. He couldn’t usually get back on the plane to look for his headphones, and the flight attendants told him to wait in the baggage compartment. But four hours before takeoff, the crew said the headphones were missing from the plane. A fellow passenger must have seen him.
When Ellis got home, she opened Find My, an app that helps locate Apple devices, from AirPods to iPhones and MacBooks, even when the device is offline. Then, surprisingly, AirPods moved around the world.
Lewis Ellis and his AirPods. See: Lewis Ellis
“The most amazing thing is that you can use the app to track a small earphone that is ‘lost’ everywhere. I don’t know who took it, but my AirPods must be on vacation. I’ve been remembering this for the past 5 months,” he said in a video shared on YouTube.
According to the Find My app, the headphones were flown from Doha to Kathmandu, Nepal, and then “travelled” to a village in the Himalayas. Then there was a short trip to Thailand before heading back to Doha.
Ellis told his best friend about the AirPods ride. This guy suggested getting a pair of headphones instead of buying new ones. Ellis accepts the challenge and sets out to find the missing AirPods.
When the headset returned to Doha, Ellis and his friend Tom flew more than 4,000 miles from England to Qatar. After hearing Ellis’ story, a local named Karim agrees to help them.
The Find My app led them to a residential complex in Doha. “It was a fun adventure, an action film searching for lost treasure,” said Ellis.
The Find My app shows AirPods in an apartment in Doha. See: Lewis Ellis
They moved from floor to floor to close the gap. Based on Bluetooth waves, the phone app sends a signal when the device is nearby. “There was a noise at the door of the apartment, I’m sure my AirPods were enough. I checked and knocked on the door and decided to put the headphones back on. But it was very quiet, not too annoying. Just like I thought,” Ellis said.
The man opened the door and listened to Alice’s story. “He said he had to give the headphones to the flight attendant, but he ended up keeping them. He apologized for the inconvenience,” Ellis said. They happily shake hands and end their journey to find the missing AirPods.
Ellis and his friend flew more than 4,000 miles and spent $2,700 to return the headphones. “My mother told me I was crazy because I could have bought four more headphones with the money. But it’s amazing to have my favorite device back. It’s a seemingly impossible task, but we did it,” said Ellis.
This isn’t the first time Apple users have been able to locate their device using the Find My app. In early 2015, New York police used the app to apprehend and successfully arrest an iPhone thief in a Manhattan subway station.
Kung Nha (Consequences New York Post)