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17th Aug 2022

Man flies 4,000 miles and spends £2,300 to track down thief who stole his AirPods

Kieran Galpin

What a story to tell the grandkids!

A man has revealed how he flew a total of 4,000 miles and spent a whopping £2,300 to track down his stolen AirPods that had ended up in Qatar.

Lewis Ellis, 31, only realised he’d left his AirPods on the plane once he was through the arrival gate in Doha, Qatar, from Bangkok, Thailand. Unfortunately, the staff wouldn’t let him back into the cabin to retrieve them, but he presumed they would return once he was inside the airport.

Sadly, that wasn’t the case.

After four hours of waiting, Ellis left the airport and soon discovered via his Find My app that his headphones were on the move.

“I then had the joy of watching them travel the world for no less than five months,” Ellis told NeedToKnow.online. “I don’t know who took them but my AirPods went on the holiday of a lifetime.”

like I was in a lost treasure film, it was all very exciting.”

The AirPods flew from Qatar to Katmandu before moving to a “small village Himalayan mountains overlooking Nepal.”

“They then took a short jaunt to Thailand before finally coming to rest back in Doha,” he added. “I just couldn’t stand it any longer – so I decided to track them down.”

Naturally, Ellis chose to hunt them down and was soon back in Doha, constantly checking the app to stay up to date. He was also accompanied by his friend Lewis and a local good samaritan called Karim.

He said the hunt felt “like I was in a lost treasure film, it was all very exciting.”

like I was in a lost treasure film, it was all very exciting.”

Arriving at the location of his headphones, the group went door-to-door in an apartment building until his phone suddenly connected to them.

“We knew they were inside and I was determined to get them back. I would go back every day of the trip until I got them,” he said. “I had the box with the serial number on it so was ready to prove they were mine.”

He continued: “We high-fived and cheered, it was all fun and games and there were no hard feelings.

“As we left, one person apologised for the inconvenience, but I was just happy to have them back.”

While his mum thinks he’s “mental”, given that he spent £2,300 to retrieve headphones worth a couple of hundred pounds, Ellis has no regrets.

“I didn’t really expect to get them back and I joked that flying to Doha to get them is the pettiest thing I’ve ever done,” he explained. “But it’s just great that we managed to find them – and now I don’t need to buy a new pair!”

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