—steveodwyer (@steveodwyer) January 27, 2023
- Steve O'Dwyer griped on Twitter and during a live broadcast that Lufthansa airlines lost his luggage.
- He told CNN he tracked the bags with an AirTag, which indicated they were at Heathrow, but he still hasn't gotten them back.
- The pro player took to Twitter to share other airline customers' accounts of mishandled luggage.
Professional poker player Steve O'Dwyer caught announcers off guard last month when he called out an airline during a live broadcast for losing his luggage.
"Never fly on Lufthansa airlines," O'Dwyer repeated several times on camera at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure tournament .
The pro player first griped about his luggage on Twitter, saying his bags had been missing for more than 72 hours following a connecting flight from London to the Bahamas, where the tournament was held.
"Maybe shaming them will get them to do more than tell me 'we're working on it,'" he tweeted.
—steveodwyer (@steveodwyer) January 23, 2023
Lufthansa told CNN that the airline was working to retrieve O'Dwyer's bags, and acknowledged it hadn't met its quality standards in handling the poker player's belongings.
Following the tournament, O'Dwyer recounted to CNN his journey from Ireland to the Bahamas with a connecting flight at Heathrow Airport. He told the network that while on the phone with Lufthansa for hours during the tournament, he could see the AirTag on his luggage indicating that it still was at Heathrow.
After O'Dwyer bashed Lufthansa during the tournament broadcast, he continued to tweet at the airline and some of its employees.
"You messed with the wrong passenger, and now I am determined to trash @lufthansa every chance I get," he wrote on Twitter.
—steveodwyer (@steveodwyer) January 30, 2023
Announcers at the PokerStars broadcast seemed taken aback while his competitors at the table laughed at O'Dwyer's rant.
"We can't control what the players say at the featured table," one announcer said. "I think O'Dwyer peeled the big blind just so he could take a shot at the airline that lost his luggage, knowing that the camera would be on him."
O'Dwyer told CNN he hoped publicly shaming the airline might help, but the strategy seems to have failed: O'Dwyer tweeted that he still hadn't received his luggage as of Saturday morning.
Instead, he's been contacted by several other people who also are missing their luggage. Over the past week, the poker star has taken to retweeting stories like his, as travelers increasingly use GPS to track their bags.
"was doing some twitter searches for other disgruntled @lufthansa passengers and this poor guy has been trying to get them to fully refund him for losing all 13 of his family's suitcases for 7 months!" O'Dwyer tweeted.
—steveodwyer (@steveodwyer) February 4, 2023
Insider reached out to Lufthansa for comment Sunday, but did not immediately receive a response.