The Charlotte airport is being overrun with lost-and-found items
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So many people are losing things when flying through Charlotte Douglas International Airport that the city is having a hard time managing all the lost-and-found.
Roughly 10,000 items per year are turned into the CLT lost-and-found, airport officials say. That marks a dramatic rise over the last five to 10 years as overall traffic has increased.
Charlotte Douglas has become the sixth-busiest airport in the country, with more than half a million takeoffs and landings each year. The airport served 44.4 million passengers last year.
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All that lost stuff is forcing airport officials to change how they deal with lost-and-found. For much of the last decade, the policy has been to hold onto lost items for 90 days before donating them to nonprofit organizations.
That’s no longer working.
The airport now wants authorization to only keep items for 30 days before pitching them.
The City Council is expected to approve the change Monday.
The most common lost items? Clothing and small electronic devices, the airport says. About 45 to 50 percent of lost items are claimed.
Lost items will still be donated to nonprofits. Unclaimed luggage gets donated to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department for K-9 training.