Lufthansa has located the Oscar statuette that went missing after filmmaker Pasha Talankin was told he could not bring it on board a flight from New York's JFK Airport to Frankfurt, Germany. The airline confirmed on Friday that the award is safe in Frankfurt and that it is arranging its return to Talankin.
Talankin, co-director of the documentary Mr. Nobody Against Putin, which won the Best Feature Documentary Oscar in March, said he had flown with the statuette over a dozen times without issue. However, on Wednesday, a TSA agent at JFK's Terminal 1 deemed the 8.5-pound award a potential weapon and refused to let him carry it on board.
Talankin told Deadline that a Lufthansa agent offered to walk him to the gate with the Oscar or store it in the cockpit, but TSA and a Lufthansa supervisor rejected both proposals. He was forced to check the statuette in a cardboard box provided by the airline, but upon arriving in Frankfurt, the box was missing.
Lufthansa apologised for the incident and said it is conducting a thorough review. Talankin's Oscar was returned to him on Friday morning, the airline confirmed.
