Passengers and crew aboard an Air Canada flight are being credited for their assistance in locating a lost yacht and its crew in distress off the coast of Australia.

Air Canada flight 033 from Vancouver and another Air New Zealand jet, flying from Auckland, were headed to Sydney when they were both asked to divert course.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority was investigating the signal from an emergency beacon activated at 8:15 a.m. local time Tuesday morning, and wanted help confirming the GPS location.

Flight crew and passengers aboard the Air Canada flight, peering out the windows from an altitude of approximately 6,000 feet, helped locate the yacht 275 nautical miles east of Sydney. The Air New Zealand flight then flew over to confirm the location and nature of the distress.

“AMSA thanks the captains and crews of the Air Canada and Air New Zealand aircraft for their assistance in the search and rescue operation, and their passengers for their patience,” the agency said in a statement.

After the vessel’s location was confirmed, both the Air Canada Boeing 777 and Air New Zealand A320 continued to Sydney.

A search and rescue aircraft was then dispatched to the location, where contact was made with the solo yachtsman who explained his vessel had been de-masted and was running low on fuel.

A merchant vessel was to provide shelter and assistance until the New South Wales Police ship OPV Nemesis arrived at the remote location.

This week’s episode of “Airport 24/7: Miami” is called “Catch a Thief” and it appropriately focuses on the unfortunate nitty-gritty of airports: thieves, the lost and found, and passengers’ anger over lost luggage. The episode even features a sting operation that illustrates how thefts happen to unassuming travelers.

Check out the clip above to go inside the airport’s lost and found, which receives some 2,000 items per month. Among the lost items are money, laptops, and, oh yea, penis pumps, leeches and coolers full of eye balls.

For more “Airport 24/7: Miami” tune in Tuesdays at 9 p.m. Eastern.

Pythias Brown, a former TSA screener at Newark airport in New Jersey, was sentenced to three years in
federal prison in 2009 for stealing from passenger luggage.

Superior resources for an airport lost and found can ensure greater success when it comes to ensuring that travelers are not forgetting something when they move on. Should your terminal be limited to only a simple storage box, you may be failing to provide travelers with a superior experience and the greater satisfaction they seek when they choose to fly. 

Customer satisfaction is of paramount concern within the travel industry. Supplying travelers with a more enjoyable and satisfying experience can make a great deal of difference. Having a misplaced or forgotten valuable spoil an otherwise enjoyable visit to one of the many airports that are part of a journey can be avoided, thanks to the right options and resources.

With additional resources, methods and the means to ensure that less forgotten items need to find their way into such a condition, greater satisfaction may be possible. Prevention may be the best way to avoid an overstocked supply of forgotten bags, digital devices and other valuables. Making the effort to remind people to take everything with them will be an important concern.

Doing more to help travelers to ensure they have forgotten nothing when they are preparing to depart may be done in a number of ways. With the high dollar value and costs associated with many smaller and hand held items, a helpful reminder could make all the difference. Travelers who find themselves without a needed belonging may have their entire experience ruined because of it.

The information that something has been located would be of best use to those before they leave the premises. Making every effort to ensure that a lost or forgotten belonging can be retrieved while travelers and passengers are still on site could make a critical difference. There are ample ways that you can rely this information to passengers who are still on site.

There are many things that are left behind and never claimed. Finding a useful purpose for such possessions may be the only option left when all else has failed. By donating such belongings after a certain period of time has passed, it may be possible to recover a little of their value and find a way to put them to good use, being left in storage for far too long could be limiting your space.

Online resources and the means to search for a missing item over the Internet may also be something you would do well to consider. Having an easier way to inquire about an item may mean people are more likely to make use of it. By providing this extra level of service, it may be possible to ensure much greater satisfaction is had by anyone who visits your terminal.

Creating a more effective airport lost and found will provide passengers with a valuable service. Ensuring that loss is not something they have to deal with provides travelers with a more enjoyable experience. There may be a wide variety of ways that such issues can be prevented and addressed should they become cause for concern. Such effort might make a big difference for many passengers.

The best chance of getting your stuff back is to act quickly. Delaying will only decrease the likelihood of your item(s) being found in time to hand over to you at the airport.

1. Go Back To Arrival Gate – If the plane is still at the gate, go back to the gate and speak to the gate agent. The most important step when you forget something on the plane is to go back to the gate. Politely go to the gate agent or supervisor and inform them of where you left the item and what seat you were in. Chances are that the item can be recovered quickly if the cleaning crew hasn’t yet been deployed to the plane and the crew can simply retrieve the item from your seat. Honestly, when the cleaning crew is deployed, depending on the item, your chances of recovery will be significantly decreased.
2. Go To Baggage Claim Office – If the plane is already departed, step 1 is still worth while. Perhaps a crew member left your item at the gate to be taken to lost and found, or the cleaning crew left it there. But more than likely, if your plane is gone, you’ll need to head to the baggage claim office to find out how to fill out a missing baggage form. Most likely this method will be online. But I would still go to the baggage office to see if you can file a missing item report in person.
3. Complete Missing Item Form  – This is the most important step. Make sure to fill out a missing item form with the airline. Be specific when you fill it out. Exactly where was it located and when did you realize it was lost. Also include when you notified the airline the item was lost. This will not only play an important role in notifying the airline, but will also play an important role in the next step.
4. Investigate Your Credit Card Insurance Coverage – Investigate your credit card benefits to see if the card you purchased the airline ticket with offers coverage for missing items. Last year I lost a piece of carry on luggage onboard in the seat back pocket. I immediately notified the airline but the cleaning crew had already boarded and “didn’t find” my item. So I called the line and filled out a missing item claim. Since I had already notified the airline, I included that report with the credit card along with an advertisement for a new replacement item. A check was sent in the mail within weeks and I was able to replace the item that was lost onboard.

If your travel itinerary includes the main international airport of the Netherlands and you discover that you have left something behind, you may be able to recover your item quite quickly. Amsterdam Airport Schiphol holds found items onsite for one day for fast retrieval. If it’s not picked up within that time, the items are managed by Worldwide Baggage & Packages (WBP), the Airport’s Lost and Found Department.

The good news is that if you notice an item is missing while you are still in the airport, you can stop at the closest information desk in the Arrival and Departure Halls or in the lounges to check whether your property has found. If your property has not yet been turned in or more than a day has elapsed since it was, you will need to contact the Lost and Found Department for more information.

If your item was left onboard, at the airline counter or in the gate area, you will likely need to contact the airline to retrieve your property. However, as a pretty neat perk, when you fly KLM, Royal Dutch Airlines to or from Amsterdam, Schiphol lost and found go quite the extra mile to help reunite you with your lost property.

If you have traveled to, from or through Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, you’re certainly not alone. Hartsfield-Jackson is one of the busiest airports in the world. With hundreds of thousands of passengers passing through the airport daily, keeping up with lost and found items is a huge undertaking.

The airport’s lost and found department processes items found in its common areas, which does include TSA security checkpoints. If you believe you lost your property onboard your flight, in the departure gate area or at the check-in counter, contact your airline directly to learn about their lost and found turn in and recovery procedures.

Atlanta Airline Terminal Corporation (AATC) manages Hartsfield-Jackson’s lost and found. The office is physically located on the ticketing level at Terminal North, directly across from the American Airlines lobby at ticketing positon #55. The phone number is 404-530-2100, extension 100, and their operating hours are Monday through Friday, from 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM.

You may check the status of your claim on the FoundIt! page at any time, as frequently as you wish. But please note that new claim information is only updated during the lost and found office’s business hours. Claims expire in 60 days.

Business travel can be bad for your health.

That was the conclusion of a Columbia University study last year that found high obesity, high cholesterol and high blood pressure rates among those who travel the most for work.

Now a new study by CWT Solutions Group, a travel management consultant, identifies those things that cause the most stress to travelers and possibly lead to health problems.

Here are the top five sources of stress, based on a ranking from zero to 100, with 100 being the most stressful:

1.    Lost or delayed luggage (79)
2.    Poor or no Internet connection (77)
3.    Getting stuck in an economy seat on a medium- or long-haul flight (73)
4.    Delays (72)
5.    Inconvenient departure or arrival times (69)

The survey also found that travel stress increases with age and travel frequency and that women report higher stress levels than men.

What upsets women the most? Women get more stressed than men over losing luggage and not being able to eat healthily, the report found. Men get more upset than women about flying in economy seats on long flights.

The authors of the report said that the findings can help businesses make changes in the way they plan travel to reduce stress and increase productivity among workers.

For example, the report suggested that booking employees in economy seats might save money but could end up costing more in the long run on lost productivity from stress-related illnesses.

“When travelers are traveling for business, they need to be productive,” said Michelle Surkamp, a spokeswoman for CWT Solutions. “This study is meant to help travel managers keep stress levels down.”