A warehouse in the US is selling people's belongings misplaced during flights that remain unclaimed after a minimum of 90 days.
It sells personal items like clothes, jewellery, books and souvenirs. The store called Unclaimed Baggage boasts 5000 new items per day, and it's now selling online to New Zealand.
So yes, it's possible you could spot something that once belonged to you.
Fair Go spoke to Sandra Soper, who came across the company in the search for her bags, lost on a flight to New Zealand from the UK.
She'd been trying to track it down for months through Emirates and Jetstar, the two airlines she'd flown with, when she received a call from an online pharmacy in the UK.
The pharmacy said Unclaimed Baggage had contacted it to say it had her bag. Apparently, on opening her suitcase, an employee had found her prescription medicine and contacted the pharmacy to get in touch with Sandra to find out where to have the bag sent.
However, weeks passed, and Sandra still didn't have her bag, so she googled Unclaimed Baggage to find out more about the business. She was shocked to see they sold people's lost luggage.
"It seems so wrong, really wrong. You can't just sell people's stuff. I didn't actually think that was a legal thing."
So she contacted Fair Go and we got in touch with Unclaimed Baggage, quizzing the company about its view on gaining from other people's loss, and aiding the airlines to do so too.
The company's spokesperson Sonni Hood admitted many people see it as morally wrong, but said the company believes it "provides a more sustainable solution to airlines by keeping the lost bags out of landfill and giving the belongings new life".
The company said four billion bags are checked in to flights every year. So although it maintains that only 0.03% of bags fail to be claimed, that's still thousands of bags that could end up in landfill.
The company has agreements with airlines to buy the bags — it wouldn't tell Fair Go how much for — and then either sells the contents or donates them to communities in need. Hood gave the example of hundreds of thousands of pairs of reading glasses being sent to a charity that delivers eye care.
So did the company still have Sandra's bag? It said it had sent it to a UK airport for Emirates to return it to her. It took much longer than expected, but she did eventually get it back.
Sandra realised she has Unclaimed Baggage to thank for having her bag returned but believes airlines should ultimately improve their tracing systems, and step up their efforts to reunite bags with their owners rather than sell them on.
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