Luggage and Ring Vanish at Airport
By LU ANN CAHN
Updated 10:55 AM EST, Tue, Jul 28, 2009
The NBC10 Investigators don't usually fall for a romantic tale of woe, but when they heard a missing diamond was breaking hearts, they stepped in to help the young couple.
The engagement was supposed to be a surprise, but that all changed when the luggage got lost.
Danyelle Weaver said all she expected for Christmas was a trip home to Atco, N.J. She didn’t know her boyfriend, Ken Reid, bought a beautiful engagement ring. And, she certainly didn’t know he packed it into a carry-on bag to take on the plane and then planned to propose to her at the skating rink at New York City's Rockefeller Plaza.
What Weaver did know: Ken was completely distraught when he realized he had the wrong luggage.
The saga of the missing ring begins on December 22 when the couple boarded a small USA Air Express plane in Little Rock, Arkansas.
At the last minute Reid said he was told his carry-on bag was too big. So, his bag was taken from him at the gate, a yellow tag was put on it, and it was loaded onto the plane.
The couple landed in Charlotte, NC to make another connection
“We got off the plane and there were just two bags left, her very unique one and one that looked just like mine,” Reid explained.
Reid and Weaver took off again flying from Charlotte to Washington D.C. where there was another layover. Reid opened his carry on bag. It wasn't his.
“I opened the bag instantly, knew there were different clothes, different lay out. My heart just dropped and I felt sick to my stomach,” said Reid.
So, he took it to US Airways. Reid said the employees told him to leave the bag; they wouldn't take any information from him.
“I said, 'Can I just take it to Philly?' She said she'd call airport security or police if I took the bag because it would be stealing,” said Reid.
The couple flew into Philadelphia and filed claim reports, but Reid was still trying to keep the ring a secret from his girlfriend.
That is, until US Airways inadvertently spilled the beans to her on the phone.
“I was bawling I was crying,” Weaver said. And, the couple told NBC10 that it seemed that no one at the airline was interested in helping them.
“It's made it very stressful a lot of tears, a lot of hours on the phone just to get run around in a circle…[It’s] time we could have spent with the family,” said Reid.
US Airways told the NBC10 Investigators that a few things went wrong with this situation. It would have helped if Reid, or the other passenger, put personal information on their carry-on luggage as a precaution, but neither did that.
Reid said US Airways should have given him a stub off the ticket they put on his carry-on. That might have helped find the bag later.
But even with a stub, US Airways said that bags taken at the gate are not recorded and tracked liked checked in luggage. So, US Airways doesn't have much of a trail to follow. “But we're not giving up,” said Morgan Durrant, Senior Manager in Corporate Communications for US Airways.
Neither is this newly engaged couple. “If someone does have it and they're contemplating what to do, if they would just please give it to us and just keep the bag,” Reid asks.
The carry on bag that Reid turned in at the airport in Washington D.C. is still there, unclaimed.
First Published: Jan 6, 2009 4:41 PM EST
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