A Dubliner whose search for his lost wallet took Twitter by storm over the weekend has said he found the whole experience ‘hilarious’.
Cian Hogan left his wallet on board an Aer Lingus flight from New York to Dublin on Saturday.
The wallet was fitted with an Apple Air Tag which allowed him to track it in real time and when he saw it begin to make its back to the US, he took to Twitter to track it down.
On Lunchtime Live this afternoon, he said the Tweet ‘just took off’ as soon as he sent it, with people joining him in tracking the wallet across the Atlantic and back to New York.
“It suddenly became a little encapsulated form of the internet itself,” he said. “I had the conspiracy theorists who doubted this ever happened - they were convinced I was making it all up.
“Other people then were attacking me for having the Ukraine flag in my bio and people were saying this was karma and I lost my wallet for supporting Ukraine.
“The whole thing was very amusing to follow.”
Hey Twitter. Lost my wallet on @AerLingus flight EI104 inbound from JFK. The wallet is now heading back east towards the USA! On the off chance anyone is onboard, it’s near seat 3A front of the plane left hand side. Appreciate a retweet. Thanks!! pic.twitter.com/kaLudImvNn
— Cian Hogan 🇺🇦 (@CianHogan2) April 23, 2022
He said a member of Aerlingus ground crew picked up on the story and told the crew on-board – who found the wallet and “took the seat apart to get at it”.
Eventually they handed it to Michael Mannion, a passenger who was flying back the other way and agreed to give it back to Cian when he landed in Dublin.
“I had people saying to me, ah you’ll never get this back but 99% of people are really good and that is what really emerged from this,” he said.
“People were really invested in this and found it amusing and were trying to help me get it back."
The wallet is on the move!! pic.twitter.com/2QLOxcMUGs
— Cian Hogan 🇺🇦 (@CianHogan2) April 23, 2022
He said he didn’t even cancel the card while the wallet was missing.
“I could see the wallet all the time so I knew it was on the plane and I was pretty confident someone wasn’t using it on the plane,” he said.
“Then when it took off and people were looking for it, I just kind of trusted that people would give it back.”
Final update. The wallet is home.Thanks so much to everyone. Had such a laugh last night following the thread! Irish twitter can be so funny! https://t.co/mkd7ROjutl pic.twitter.com/qCEa0t8Gf1
— Cian Hogan 🇺🇦 (@CianHogan2) April 24, 2022
Cian said he was just pleased to be able to tell a good story - especially on Twitter.
In the end, he said nearly one million people viewed his tweets before he finally got the wallet back.
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