Lost and found statistics: every figure we could source
These lost and found statistics are the public figures we could verify on the publisher’s own page: transport operators, a city government, an airline industry body, a university, and our own count of published holding periods.
Each figure links to its source and gives the year of the source. We leave out figures from software vendors’ press surveys, figures quoted only in news stories, and figures we could not find on the original page.
Updated
Reviewed . Next review due .
Cities and police
Tokyo's Metropolitan Police reported about 4.5 million reports of found items and about 1.1 million reports of lost ones in one year.
Source: Tokyo Metropolitan Government. Year of the source: 2025 (figures for the previous year, in an article of March 2026).
Air travel
SITA's baggage report found that mishandled bags cost the airline industry $6.3 billion in a year, and that transfers caused 39% of mishandling.
Source: SITA. Year of the source: 2025 (SITA Baggage IT Insights 2026, figures for 2025).
Rail, bus and tram
Southeastern, a train operator in south-east England, says it receives around 20,000 items of lost property a year.
Source: Southeastern. Year of the source: 2024 (newsroom article of June 2024).
Southeastern says the share of lost items it reunited with their owners rose from 12 percent to 21 percent in less than three months after it began tagging lost property digitally.
Source: Southeastern. Year of the source: 2024 (newsroom article of June 2024).
The South Australian Government reported that passengers left more than 14,000 items on Adelaide Metro trains, trams and buses in one year, close to 2400 of them stored at a single bus depot.
Source: Government of South Australia. Year of the source: 2024 (government news story of December 2024, figures for 2024).
Metro Trains Melbourne says up to 3,000 items a month are handed in at Flinders Street Station, and 23,706 were handed in there in one year.
Source: Metro Trains Melbourne. Year of the source: 2018 (figures for 2018).
Transport for London says it can take up to 15 days to review a lost property enquiry.
Source: Transport for London. Year of the source: 2026 (undated help page, as opened).
First Bus says logging a lost item can take up to 2 working days, and in most cases it keeps lost property for a month.
Source: First Bus. Year of the source: 2026 (undated help page, as opened).
Berlin's transport operator BVG says found computers and smartphones may no longer be auctioned and are destroyed after six weeks of storage, for data protection reasons.
Source: Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG). Year of the source: 2026 (undated article, as opened).
Universities
Binghamton University Police keep a record of each found property transaction for three years.
Source: Binghamton University. Year of the source: 2026 (university policy, as opened).
Our own count: published holding periods
Across the 101 published rules in this table, from 9 countries, the median standard holding period is 30 days, and half of the rules fall between 18 days and 60 days. The largest sectors have these medians: universities and colleges 30 days, airports 30 days and public transport 30 days.
Source: vFound's holding periods data, 101 rules opened on their publishers' own pages. See the table.
How we chose the figures
A figure is listed only if we opened the publisher’s own page and found the words that support it, which are kept in our records with the date we opened the page. Every week vFound re-opens each page and looks for those words, and a figure whose words have gone is reported to us to correct or remove.
Read more
Operators count different things: items handed in, items reported lost, items returned. Read each figure as the publisher’s own count for its own network and year, not as a rate you can compare across operators.
Frequently asked questions
How many items are left on public transport?+
Operators publish their own counts for their own networks. The figures above include Southeastern in England, Metro Trains Melbourne at Flinders Street Station and Adelaide Metro, each with its year. We could not verify a single worldwide count.
Why are there no survey statistics on this page?+
We list only figures published, on its own page, by the operator, government, regulator or industry body that holds the data. A survey run by a company that sells lost and found services is not listed here.
Can I quote these lost and found statistics?+
Quote the original publisher, using the source link beside each figure, because the publisher owns the figure. Our own count of holding periods comes from vFound’s holding periods data page.
Count what your own desk finds and returns
vFound Lost & Found keeps every found item, claim and return in one record, so your desk can see what it holds and what goes back to its owners.
Request your free trial