Dear United Airlines Passenger Whose Lost Laptop Meant the Flight Had to Turn Around

When my grandmother heard someone else’s tale of woe, she used to say: There but for the grace of God, go I.

Speaking of which, a United Airlines flight heading from Washington to Rome had to turn around recently, after a passenger’s laptop somehow fell down the sidewall of the Boeing 767 and into the cargo area.

I doubt any of us would ever have heard about this, except that the laptop was powered on when it fell. Concerns about unattended lithium batteries on airplanes led the captain to return to Dulles International Airport.

“We don’t know the status of it, we can’t access it, we can’t see it,” the United Airlines captain told air traffic control, in a recording that has been saved and uploaded to YouTube. “So our decision is to return to Dulles and find this laptop before we can continue over the ocean.”

This is one of those odd stories where we have few details, and yet I crave more. (I’ve asked United Airlines for comment beyond what has been reported elsewhere, but have yet to hear back.)

Because, words like “lost,” “laptop” and “airport” in the same sentence rekindle a heck of a memory for me—something that regular readers here might remember.

My laptop story

A quick bit of irony: the United Airlines flight that turned around earlier this month was over Boston when the captain made the report.

Boston’s Logan airport happens to be where I lost my laptop on the sidewalk after a family vacation two and a half years ago.

While loading our car at the arrivals area in an atmosphere of pure chaos, I somehow left it behind. When I realized an hour later on the way to New Hampshire what had happened, I can hardly describe the feelings of anxiety and panic.

It wasn’t the $1,000 cost of the laptop, of course; it was the fact that in the 21st century, our entire lives are stored digitally—to say nothing of all of the records of my small (but big-to-me) business.

In the moment, I couldn’t recall when I’d last backed it up, or if I’d registered it so I could find it remotely, or even wipe it if needed.

There was a happy ending in that a good Samaritan found my bag and turned it in, and while the logistics meant I had to make a 7-hour round trip drive to recover it, I did get it back.

Heck, I even got an Inc.com column out of the whole thing.

I also got something else—yet another life experience that ultimately lets me try to see the world through other people’s eyes. Cases in point:

The Captain

First, the United Airlines captain. I can’t imagine he enjoyed having to make this decision. I guess that’s why he gets the four stripes on his shoulders.

I say “he” because it’s a man’s voice on the ATC recording. Speaking of which:

This is just out of an abundance of caution and just precautionary, you know, due to the lithium battery in the cargo area where it’s not even near the suppression system that we have for fires down there. So this is just a safety precaution.

Honestly, who can complain when the captain of an airliner makes a decision and justifies it like that?

Flying across the Atlantic Ocean with a live, lost lithium battery floating around the cargo area—”where it’s not even near the suppression system that we have for fires down there,” as the captain put it—would have been a big risk.

The Laptop Passenger

We don’t know anything about this person, and so I don’t know if he or she handled the whole thing well or not.

But I imagine a small business owner like me (and maybe you), trying to get work done on a redeye flight on the eve of an Italian vacation—only to somehow have your laptop slip out of your hands and then (how does this even happen?) get swallowed by the plane itself.

If this person is anything like me, I imagine two competing sources of anxiety:

Embarrassment at the idea of being the source of an entire airliner having to turn around, thus delaying the plans of likely hundreds of other people to get to Rome.

Mild levels of panic, as happened to me, thinking about whether your laptop and its contents are now going to be lost to you—along with whatever digital memories they contained.

Seriously, answer me this: Without looking, when was the last time your computer was backed up?

The Other Passengers

Of course, we have to consider everyone else on the plane.

A United Airlines Boeing 767 can hold between 167 and 231 passengers. I don’t know if this was a full flight, but honestly when was the last time you were on a not-full flight (or close to it)?

That means at least 150 or more other people who were inconvenienced by the fact that the flight took off, turned around, landed, had to regroup, and then apparently took off again at 3:24 a.m.— three hours after its original departure.

I feel for them as well. Heck, I’ve actually written here before about a 7-hour delay I once had on the return leg of a very similar United Airlines route (Rome to Newark).

Everyone else’s battles

Look, I don’t know what the atmosphere was like on the airplane. I don’t know if the captain told all the other passengers the exact reason for the turnaround.

But the whole episode reminds me of a quote that I’ve seen paraphrased and attributed to people ranging from Plato to Tim Ferriss:

Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.

I’ve written a lot about airlines here at Inc.com, and sometimes they’re among the most popular stories.

One theory why is that sitting crammed together in a metal tube at 30,000 feet, simultaneously anonymously and yet oddly intimately, is something everyone can relate to.

This lost-laptop story is so off-the-wall. In fact, the ATC controller on the recording can be heard saying: “United 126, that’s a new weird story. I’ve never heard anything like that before. Good story to tell in the pilot lounge.”

In the end, whether you’re the captain making a tough call, the mortified passenger, or one of the hundreds inconveniently delayed, we’re all just trying to get where we’re going—safely.

There but for the grace of God go any of us.