Originally Posted by
Delta Hog
What if it was perfectly clear the owner abandoned? Say, if the owner carried it off the plane and then left it in a seat in the terminal and walked away. Can one take it then?
You mean you've never seen anybody get off the plane with two handfuls of stuff, stop at a seat, rearrange the stuff and forget or drop something? I used to travel with somebody who did that every time. If you saw a cell phone sitting on a seat, would you assume it was abandoned?
If I saw something that wasn't clearly disposable (disposable in my view: newspaper, coffee cup, half candy bar or similar) I would assume it to be lost or forgotten, not abandoned.