My friend carried his binoculars (Swarosvskis of some sort) as a carry-on while flying back home from an-out-of state hunt. While waiting for the plane, he set his bag with the binocs in them down next to him in a chair and read the paper. When they opened the plane for boarding, he closed his newspaper and got in line. Once back in Phoenix, he remembered his bag sitting back at the airport. Of course he called the airport, but it was really only to confirm that they were gone forever.
Two years prior to that, he had me stop along the road near the South Fork of the Boise so he could glass a hillside. He glassed with his awesome brand new pair of 15X56 Zeiss while I fiddled around with something mechanical on the truck. Before we left, he got out and took a leak or something and got back in the truck. Back home, 250 miles later, he remembered that he left those binocs sitting on the roof of my truck. They, too, were gone forever. In two years, he lost about $3000 worth of glass. He has the funds, but it still pinched him pretty good.
The Christian