Woman shocked to get lost luggage returned — four years later

It was a long, long journey home.

Four years after Oregon resident April Gavin took a business trip to Chicago, where United Airlines lost her luggage, her itinerant suitcase surfaced — in Honduras.

Gavin recounted the saga, which isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement for United Airlines’ baggage services, on TikTok, where she goes by the handle @aprildgavin.

“Okay, so, four years ago, August 4 of 2018, I went on a business trip,” she said in a video that has nearly 214,000 views. “And while I was on that business trip — I went to Chicago, I live in Oregon —, on the way home, United Airlines lost my luggage.”

She said she tried for “months and months” to recover her bag but the airline told her they had “no idea” where it was. Until this month — when her phone rang with an update.

“All of a sudden, I get a phone call from Houston, Texas, saying that they found my luggage, and I was confused,” she said, adding that the airline “thought it was a typo that it had been missing for four years.

“It was in Honduras. And who knows where else it went. But it came from Honduras. Went to Houston, Texas.”

It’s unclear what kind of adventures the suitcase had while on the lam, but Gavin said it was brand new when she traveled and now had some wear and tear on it.

She was also understandably skittish about opening it because she has “a huge phobia of bugs” so let it sit on her porch for a week.

After mustering up her courage, she unzipped the black-and-white polka-dotted suitcase and found her belongings, including clothes, jewelry, her prescription glasses, a laptop charger, a blowdryer and clothes that she’d bought for her daughters while she was on her business trip.

“It’s like Christmas opening up all my stuff,” she joked, adding, “I cannot believe that this suitcase has been traveling around for four years, went to Honduras, finally made it back to me, and it looks like almost everything is still in it. So, thanks United.”

On commenter joked, “That suitcase has traveled more in those four years than I have in my life,” while another noted, “I started and graduated from college in that time! Wild.”

United Airlines did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.

In a follow-up video, Gavin said she had been reimbursed an amount between $1,250 and $1,700 by United, which ultimately got to the bottom of the slip-up: the suitcase had never been scanned when she dropped it off in Chicago at the baggage check.

“So that’s why they were having so much trouble finding it,” she said.

A rep from United Airlines said, “We’re very pleased to resolve this case after all this time.”