There’s a lady who, with a simple text message, helped a lot of stranded travelers who lost their luggage following a crazy weekend of flight cancellations.
Last December, a record winter storm named Elliot caused thousands of flight cancellations, which led Brittany Loubier-Vervisch, a science teacher, to postpone her Christmas trip to meet her family.
She and her husband decided to go hiking in Tucson at the last minute, but they called it off about 30 minutes before Southwest Airlines officially canceled their trip.
So, the couple had to retrieve their luggage.
“I got there (and) was like, ‘Oh my God. I’ve never seen anything like this,'” Brittany said. “Just piles of luggage everywhere between the carousels, multiple rows of luggage.”
While she was looking for her lost luggage, an idea popped up: she could do more than just that!
She decided to help the owners of the owners who got separated from their luggage.
She was searching through the piles of bags at the baggage claims and noticed that there were tags on them with the owner’s contact number, so she sent them a text message.
“I was walking through the bags, like, ‘Oh, here’s your bags. Is this your name?'” Brittany explained. “And they were like, ‘Yes,’ I’m like, ‘Oh, here’s your other bags.’
And the people she texted were a bit puzzled and confused, asking “Do you work here?”
Brittany said that she has sent between 70-80 text messages to people, letting them know where to find their luggage, according to InspireMore.
Dozens of travelers who lost their bags in cities around the United States deemed the simple gesture of sending a text message “lifesaving.”
Brittany said that some passengers had been making multiple trips to Tampa Airport for three days looking for their luggage, and some people had waited in line for hours without realizing that their bags were only a few hundred feet away.
Among the grateful recipients of Brittany’s text messages was Taira Meadow.
“Thank you to the random stranger who texted me that my suitcase was, in fact, in Tampa,” Taira wrote on Twitter. “You are a lifesaver! Especially since there was no way Southwest could ever tell me.”
“One family came up, they were supposed to be flying … It was an adult, and they were supposed to be flying with older family members, and they had to collect like seven pieces of luggage,” Brittany told The Independent.
“I texted the one person, and then they all came down, and he was like, ‘Oh my God, did you send me the text?’ And I was like, ‘Here’s your other bags,'” she added.
Southwest staff said that they had never witnessed anything like that weekend nightmare in their years at the company.
Since bomb cyclone Elliot started messing with airline schedules on December 22, Southwest has canceled more than 15,700 flights.
While waiting for her baggage, Brittany said employees told her the company’s computer system had crashed. She saw the staff working hard to control the chaos with the bags.
“They were just like running back and forth, getting bags and trying to help people and answering questions,” she said.
While Brittany claims her good deed only benefited passengers at one airport out of hundreds in the United States, many who received a text message from her or were moved by the pure gesture have expressed their gratitude for her on social media.
She explained that many travelers have already spent money to enjoy a trip and purchase presents for their kids or family members. They might need more luxury to book a thousand-dollar flight on another airline to attempt to come home.
She also said that she felt terrible for everyone who was suddenly in an unfamiliar city and didn’t know where their bags were.
The science teacher advised travelers to always put a tag with their name and contact number on their luggage so that in case they encounter the same situation, a kind stranger might do the same and help them find their bag through a simple text message.
Brittany and her husband returned home that day, but her trip to the airport had helped a lot of troubled travelers.
“The most important thing is, there’s always something everyone can do to help others. Anybody could have done what I did. It was very simple,” Brittany said.
Watch how Britanny’s text message helped travelers who lost their luggage:
