A few years ago, I left my passport and boarding pass in the seat pocket on ORD-JAC. I didn't discover the loss until about a week later and frantically called reservations, customer service and L&F in ORD. The problem was that the planes are not cleaned in JAC but simply turned around and sent back to ORD. Of course, I never heard from anyone at ORD L&F.

A few weeks after my round of calls, I received an envelope from AA at the address of record in my AAdvantage account. Inside was my passport and a print-out of my AAdvantage profile. I can only assume that the cleaning crew found it and turned it in to a gate agent, who then was thoughtful enough to send it back to me. I sent more than one SOS to the person who had written their name as the return contact at AA.