For months, a man tried to get answers from Air NZ about his missing laptop. Then Stuff got involved

Friday, 19 June 2026

UK-based patent attorney Garth Hendry left his laptop on an Air NZ flight from Auckland to Melbourne in March.

Over several weeks, he tried to get hold of the airline to find out if it had the device, before finally giving up and contacting Stuff.

Just a few hours after Stuff contacted Air NZ, it said the laptop had been found.

Solving Stuff is where we investigate reader complaints and push for answers. You can read more about the project here, and submit your story for consideration at the end of the article.

In this instalment: UK-based Kiwi patent attorney Garth Hendry left his laptop, containing sensitive work material, on an Air NZ plane during a trip home in March. Attempts to find out what happened to it were unsuccessful, until Stuff got involved.

The problem

Garth Hendry was panicking.

He’d already had to reschedule a client meeting in Melbourne by a day because of fog delays in New Zealand.

The rescheduled Air NZ flight from Auckland - on March 17 - was two hours late departing due to a mechanical fault.

“That made me late for my rescheduled Melbourne client meeting, which was super important,” says Hendry, who is a Kiwi based in the UK and a director of Catalyst Intellectual Property.

“As a consequence of my panic to depart the aircraft as quickly as possible … I inadvertently left my laptop in the seat compartment,” he says.

“I’m a patent attorney, all the information on there is extremely commercially sensitive.”

What went wrong

As Hendry left his business class seat he did a mental check and because he had his satchel that houses his laptop - a Lenovo ThinkPad T14 - with him, he assumed the laptop was safe inside.

He had back-to-back meetings that didn’t require his laptop - it wasn’t until he travelled to Tasmania the following day that he unpacked his satchel and found it was missing.

He travelled through Melbourne on his way back to New Zealand, but because his connection was “horrendously tight”, didn’t have a chance to visit lost property.

Instead, Hendry went to Air NZ’s website and filled out a lost property form.

He says he completed the form the day after the flight, the following week, two weeks after that, and a month after that.

“There was never any electronic receipt issued to confirm that the completed form had been received and the request to locate my laptop would be followed-up.”

He tried the airline’s chatbot, which he says was a “complete waste of time” as it merely redirected him to the lost property form.

He tried calling the airline three times, including after getting home to England.

On one occasion he says he was placed on hold for about 50 minutes until he was finally put through to an operator.

“She placed me on hold while she called baggage services in Melbourne, only for me to be cut-off.”

A month or so later he got through again, only to be told he’d have to deal directly with baggage services in Melbourne.

He got nowhere with that, either.

After seemingly exhausting all avenues, “we actually had to get our IT provider to press this kind of detonation button remotely, to shut the laptop down”.

At this point, Hendry didn’t even have any confirmation from the airline that the laptop was lost so that his firm could make an insurance claim.

In desperation, one of his colleagues got in touch with Stuff.

What we did

Hendry was unable to get anywhere in three months, but Stuff solved the problem in less than a day, and it involved no journalistic genius.

We simply emailed the Air NZ public affairs office explaining the situation and providing Hendry’s flight and seat details.

Before the day ended, Hendry received an email from Air NZ’s lost and found, saying his laptop had been found and was available for collection at Auckland International Airport.

The public affairs team confirmed to Stuff that the device had been found, but wouldn’t answer further questions, including why Hendry’s online reports weren’t responded to.

Hendry was thrilled with the outcome.

But he said it was disappointing he’d had to involve the media - and publicly call out Air NZ’s customer service practices - for his lost property to make “a miraculous and expedient reappearance”.

He said getting no response to his queries, “gives you no confidence they are actually doing something to assist you to recover your valuable property”.

“I feel airline service provision generally has gone down in the past five years.”