United said it had this woman's missing bag. Her Apple AirTag helped her tracked it to a residence
Valerie Szybala used the power of social media and the technology in an Apple AirTag to track down a missing bag herself recently and eventually found it at a residential address after her airline told her it was in their possession.
Szybala she would not have gotten it back if a tweet about her situation hadn't gone viral.
Although United Airlines told her the luggage was in a delivery center, Szybala tracked the bag as it moved from an apartment building to a Mcdonald's and various places in Virginia and Maryland over the course of three days.
After her tweet got millions of views, Szybala took four trips to the apartment building trying to get her bag. She spotted other empty luggage behind that building and called local police to investigate possible theft.
After all that work, Szybala finally got her bag back but wants to know why this happened.
"I don't think they've told me the truth about what happened," she said.
In the future, Szybala said she'd handle her luggage differently.
"So my word of advice, besides the AirTag, is take a photo of all your things before you travel," she said. "And if an airline says that they're gonna deliver bags to you, say 'no, I'll pick it up.' That was my big mistake. I should have said 'I'm coming to the airport to pick it up.'"
United told WUSA that it is "working with our baggage delivery vendor to understand the details of this situation."