Asiana Airlines lost and found: recover an in-flight item

Left something on an Asiana Airlines flight? Cabin items are held by the airline — but which items, for how long, and where you have to stand to collect them are all narrower than most people expect.

Report it, and report it fast

• Search or report via Asiana's In-Flight Lost & Found lookup, or
• Call the customer center: 1588-8000

Have your flight number, travel date and seat number ready, plus a clear description. Links are in the Asiana directory entry.

Searched and found nothing? That's normal on day one

Items left on board are handed to staff at the arrival airport — not the airport you departed from. If you connected somewhere, check the city you actually landed in.

Asiana also warns that items handed in at night or over a weekend may not be registered immediately. An empty search result the same day is not proof your item is gone. Search again after a couple of business days before you give up on it.

You have 30 days

Asiana holds found items for a limited window and discards them after 30 days. Neck pillows and perishable items are thrown out continuously and never stored at all.

That clock is the most important thing on this page. Items are usually lost for good not because nobody found them, but because the passenger spent three weeks deciding what to do.

Three things Asiana will never have

1. Passports, ID cards and cash. Anything carrying personal information or real value is handed to airport police, not kept by the airline. Those go through the police system — see how to search Police Minwon24 (formerly LOST112).
2. Anything with a lithium battery. Spare batteries, e-cigarettes and cordless curling irons are discarded immediately on discovery as a fire risk. They are not held for 30 days, or for any days.
3. Items lost in the terminal. Once you are off the aircraft it belongs to the airport's lost and found, not to Asiana. See lost and found at Korean airports.

Which desk actually holds it

Asiana runs its own lost item storage centres at three airports:

• Incheon — 032-744-2205
• Gimpo — 02-2669-1346
• Jeju — 064-800-6647

If the item went missing in the terminal rather than the cabin, you want the airport instead — Incheon 032-741-3110 / 3114, Gimpo 02-2660-4097, Jeju 064-797-2521. For a passport or a wallet, Incheon Airport Police is 032-740-0112.

Collection is in person, in Korea

This is where most overseas passengers stop, and it is worth being blunt about it: Asiana does not ship recovered items abroad. An item waits at the storage centre holding it until you, or somebody you authorise, collect it during opening hours.

So if you have already flown home, the airline is a dead end on its own. Not because your item wasn't found — often it has been, and it is sitting on a shelf at Incheon with your seat number attached — but because there is no route from that shelf to your address, and the 30-day clock keeps running while you look for one.

Your realistic options are someone you know in Korea collecting it for you, or a proxy service.

A "not found" answer is not final

Items do not stay put. A cabin item is often passed to the arrival airport's lost & found, or on to the police, rather than kept by the carrier. When the airline says it does not have your item, ask where it was transferred and on what date — not only whether it is there. Ask about timing too: an item handed in today may not be logged or searchable for several days.

If it has reached the police

An item handed in by cabin crew or passed on by the airline appears in Police Minwon24 (formerly LOST112) at minwon24.police.go.kr. How to search it is in the police lost & found guide.

Two things are true wherever the item came from. Nothing appears there for days after the handover, so an early search proves little and is not a reason to stop looking. And the record shows where the item was handed in — the office, depot or station that received it — not where you lost it, so keep the region wide and lead with item type and date.

If Korean is the barrier

1330 is Korea's tourist help line, run by the Korea Tourism Organization. It is free, answers 24 hours a day, and offers interpretation in English, Japanese, Chinese and other languages.

It is not a lost & found office — it holds no items and keeps no database. What it does is interpret, including on a three-way call with an airline call centre, an airport desk or a police station, and explain what a Korean-language page or notice actually says.

If the item is located but you cannot collect it in person — you have left Korea, or you are nowhere near the arrival airport — it can be released to someone acting for you with written authorization and their own ID, and shipping abroad is arranged by whoever collects it: here's what that takes.

Part of the items left on a plane guide.