Overview
- Pavel Talankin was stopped at JFK, where a TSA agent on Wednesday said his 8.5‑pound Oscar could be used as a weapon, so Lufthansa checked it in a box that never arrived in Frankfurt.
- The director says he had flown a dozen or more times with the statuette as a carry-on since March without any problems.
- A Lufthansa staffer offered to escort the trophy to the gate or store it in the cockpit, but TSA and a Lufthansa supervisor refused, according to Talankin and his team.
- Co-director David Borenstein posted an appeal on Instagram with a Lufthansa lost-baggage slip, tagging TSA and Lufthansa, and news outlets report no official explanation or recovery yet.
- Borenstein questioned whether a famous actor or fluent English speaker would have faced the same order, and past cases show the Academy has issued replacements when statuettes go missing.