I’m genuinely confused about what may have happened to my Oura ring after my United Airlines journey to Hong Kong, but one thing is clear: it’s gone.
My Lost Oura Ring On United Airlines – I’m Flummoxed!
My wife got me an Oura Ring last year and I quite like it for tracking my sleep patterns. There’s a lot of stress in my life right now, but I try to get enough sleep each night, which is a critical tool in slowing down aging and promoting total body health.
You may have noticed from recent trip reports that I now wear this Oura ring on my right ring finger…but something happened and I’m genuinely curious what unfolded.
I got up from bed and went right to Burbank Airport for my flight up to San Francisco, which preceded my flight to Hong Kong. While in SFO, I took a shower in the United Polaris Lounge since I had not taken one at home that morning. I always take the ring off when I shower or sit in the sauna because it not ideal for it to get wet or extremely hot.
Here, I distinctly recall setting it down where I’ve circled the picture below:
Fast-forward 20 minutes. I boarded my flight to Hong Kong, looked down at my hand, and noticed that my Oura ring was missing.
I (thought I) knew exactly where I left it and tried to exit the aircraft (there was still 25 minutes left before scheduled pushback), but was told I was not allowed off the aircraft. Instead, flights attendants messaged gate agents and the gate agents messaged the Polaris Lounge.
But it was not found. A gate agent even came down to the plane and spoke to me and I showed her a picture of it. Nope. Not there.
The Oura app shows the ring’s location and it did not appear in the Polaris Lounge. Instead, it appeared elsewhere at SFO. Did someone grab it?
We took off.
My brother happened to be flying out of SFO that evening and I sent him to the Polaris Lounge to check once more. The staff knew full well what he was referring to and they told him that five people had spent an immense out of time searching for it.
As the flight progressed, I browsed through the pictures I had taken and noticed I had taken mirror selfie after my shower (I do this to show that these lounge reviews and hotel reviews are written by a real person, not AI). I also noticed I had put my ring back on…
Yet the ring’s location still showed at SFO.
However as we neared Hong Kong, suddenly the ring’s location changed…to being over the Aleutian Islands, which was part of our flight path.
How incredibly odd!
Did my ring just fall off my finger? It never felt loose…
Thus began a careful search of my seat, bag, and overhead bin for the ring.
I couldn’t find it (and yes, I looked between the cushions and in the crevice behind the seat).
In Hong Kong, I dumped out the entire contents of my bag, but the ring wasn’t there.
Now a few days have passed and the last known location of the ring remains over the Aleutian Islands.
The most likely explanation I can come up with is that it fell off on the plane and I just could not find it, even though I very carefully searched for it.
But could someone have found it and pocketed it if it fell off on the jetbridge or whilst walking to my seat (through two large business class cabins)? I suppose. If someone has my ring, they can reset it and use it…it’s not like an iPhone that I can brick if stolen.
CONCLUSION
I keep hoping United will email or call me that they found the ring, but I’m not keeping my hopes up. This is a mystery, though. What happened to the ring?
If you did find an Oura ring, be kind and drop me a note…but I guess it’s time to buy a new one. And at least it wasn’t my wedding ring that “fell off” onboard!
What do you think happened to my Oura ring?
Well, that’s one way to track a particular aircraft…
Ha! If only the battery didn’t die!
Did you check carefully through your laundry and surrounding area after getting home? I lost a ring for 10 years only found by chance when a washer was replaced. Good luck
I did. I wish it was there… 🙁
You didn’t get a cat ? They love to play with rings. I will pray that your ring is found.
Have been using an Oura ring for over 4 years now and can’t be without it. It is super helpful and has helped me to change a lot of behaviors that made me much healthier. With that said, I have lost my ring probably 4 times already and I feel your pain. The main problem in my case started with losing weight which made the original ring loose on my finger. Then, changes in temperature makes your finger swallow or shrink and with that the ring easily falls off. I only take mine off during sower which is the time I use to recharge it. You mentioned about “not ideal for it to get wet or extremely hot” but I use mine at the beach, sauna, hot tub, etc.. and never ever had an issue other than again my finger shrinking a bit and ring falling off. I also have the titanium in stealth and I wear it at the gym lifting weights and I am surprised how resistant they are with almost no scratches at all.
Back to the location of your ring, I once lost it inside my house and for weeks I tried to find it. The location showed it inside my house but good luck finding it since it does not have any sound on it. I live in a 3 story house so it could be anywhere. I contacted Oura and they offered me like $50 discount towards buying a new one which I did. Over a year later, when doing something in my son’s room I found the lost ring under his bed. It was tucked in a tiny corner so probably when I was changing his bed sheets it got stuck there. So for a while I had 2 rings until I lost the new one and never found it. I have no idea why yours keep showing over the Aleutian Islands but maybe it ran out of battery around that time and it was the last time it connected to a device that could track it. I bet it is somewhere inside the airplane.
The “Find My Ring” in the app can be useful if you know that it’s around you somewhere. There’s a 3rd party app that does the similar job — basically telling how far the BT-LE signal is. I used the latter a few times in the past to figure out where I had left the ring at home..
They should include a small buzzer/speaker though.
Well it’s net $125 shipped if you have the Amex Personal Platinum card and use this link, not the worst outcome.
https://ouraring.com/discount/cxfifty
A card I don’t have, but I’ll see what I can do.
What Maryland said – look carefully through every inch of your bags and clothing. I once thought I lost a (rather expensive) watch my dad gave to me. It eventually showed up some two or three years later – in one of the cubbies of my bedroom closet, hidden amongst several layers of clothes, when I finally got around to cleaning everything up in there. My best guess is I must have put it down on that cubby and forgotten about it, and then it got lost in the rubble. Even though I swore I’d looked through that closet thoroughly multiple times.
I already have…three times now…but will do so once more.
My wife has damaged hers irreparably 3 times. Each time we tell Oura, expecting them to say to buy another, but each time they just send her a new one for free. This has happened without ever sending the existing ring in. YMMV.
If possible, it’s best to shower at home in the mornings.
I personally prefer to shower at night before bed.
Taking a regular shower before bed is always a healthy habit. A morning shower at home before a long journey can also be a good stimulant for both physical and mental health.
On our recent trip after packing our suitcases, I realized that my wedding ring was gone. I looked everywhere in the rental home we stayed, to no avail. That night when I unpacked at the next hotel, I suddenly remembered that when I packed one suitcase, I pushed a metal water bottle deep along the side of the suitcase. When I pushed my hand in the same way again, I suddenly felt the ring right there! It must have come off when I pulled my hand out along the inside of the suitcase.
I’ll take the mystery over when I left my iPad on an AA flight and tracked it across the country for two weeks before it died with zero help from AA. I also assume it means that plane was not properly cleaned over that time haha
Buy the new one with Platinum Amex and get the $200 credit
I don’t mean to be snarky, but you seem to lose stuff on airplanes, just recently your laptop? I’d never heard of an Oura ring, so I just did so, it sounds pretty cool. How could someone have gotten into your shower room, didn’t you lock the door? I lose stuff all the time, but I’m 75 :-). I do try to take a mental list of what I’ve brought with me on planes, or for that matter anywhere. The last things I lost on a plane were 2 bottles of nail polish, in business, which I had planned to apply on a trip to Europe. I’m sure the other pax were happy I forgot to do so
I’m absolutely terrible. I left my passport on the plane again when I flew Aer Lingus several weeks ago…I just never learn:
https://liveandletsfly.com/lufthansa-saved-christmas/
I lost my ring in February 2025, sent the hotel a message where I might have left it (not found) and tried to find all over the place.
I noticed that the App will keep showing it’s position for a long time, and it’s moving around so I’m assuming that it will just take the phone position every now and then — this was rather misleading when I was trying to find it. Unless Oura really has a battery that lasts for months, the location could not have been correct. Might still be showing it if I hadn’t replaced with a new Oura Gen4 a while ago.
When I downloaded the raw data from Oura Cloud, it didn’t have positions listed since I had lost it.