Savvy travelers have in recent years discovered one of the most helpful hacks while flying: using an Apple AirTag to keep track of checked luggage. The popularity of the quarter-size devices soared during the summer of 2022, when lost luggage was one of the lowlights among many other travel disruptions.
However, there was one small drawback: Even if fliers knew where their missing suitcase was, there was no formal way of sharing its exact location with the airline.
Until now.
As part of Apple’s latest software update, the tech giant just announced a game-changing partnership that 18 major airlines have already joined. With the new development, users will soon be able to share with airlines a secure link for an AirTag’s location—and, accordingly, a suitcase—through the Find My app on their Apple devices.
It’s a pivotal move that could ease one of the biggest hassles in air travel by helping reunite travelers with lost luggage more quickly and efficiently.
“Find My is an essential tool for users around the world to keep track of and find their belongings,” Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, said in a statement. “The Find My network and AirTag have proven to be a powerful combination for users while traveling, providing invaluable location information when bags have been misplaced or mishandled. With Share Item Location, we’re excited to give users a new way to easily share this information directly with third parties like airlines, all while protecting their privacy.”
When will it be up and running?
The feature is currently available on iPhones running iOS 18.2’s public beta testing. Later this year, the updated software will be free for all users with an iPhone XS or newer.
There’s no official start date for when airlines will be able to view shared item locations. However, 18 carriers have already signed on to accept Find My item locations as part of their process for locating mishandled bags. They include Aer Lingus, Air Canada, Air New Zealand, Austrian Airlines, British Airways, Brussels Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Eurowings, Iberia, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Lufthansa, Qantas, Singapore Airlines, Swiss International Air Lines, Turkish Airlines, United, Virgin Atlantic, and Vueling. More carriers are expected to be added.
“We’ve worked closely with Apple to incorporate Share Item Location into our baggage recovery process and are excited to make this feature available to our customers soon,” said David Kinzelman, United’s chief customer officer in a statement. “We know many of our customers are already traveling with AirTag in their checked bags, and this feature will soon make it easier for them to share location information with us safely and securely, helping our customer service agents work more efficiently and giving our customers added peace of mind.”
Security features in place
According to Apple, each link will be accessible by “a small number of people, and recipients will be required to authenticate in order to view the link through either an Apple Account or a partner email address.” It’s one of the security measures, along with the shared location being disabled as soon as the AirTag owner is reunited with their bag (or after seven days, whichever comes sooner). Additionally, users can stop sharing the location at any time.
Apple also announced it will be working with SITA, an air transport technology company, to build Share My Location functionality into SITA’s WorldTracer. This baggage tracing and matching system is used by more than 500 airlines at approximately 2,800 airports around the world to help report lost bags and reunite them with their owners.
A promising solution for lost luggage
According to SITA, statistics for mishandled bags—meaning delayed, damaged, lost, or stolen—have recently improved, with approximately 6.9 mishandled bags per 1,000 customers in 2023 (compared to a figure of 7.6 in 2022, when some 26 million bags were mishandled worldwide). Mishandling can happen for many reasons: a damaged or lost luggage tag, a tech malfunction, or human error, such as an agent typing in the wrong airport code.
However, if travelers are able to locate their bags and share that information with airlines, which is the goal for Apple’s new initiative, it could help significantly reduce the number of lost bags—not to mention lower travelers’ stress.
“Now that travelers can easily show airlines the precise location of lost luggage, I would expect two things to happen: the average wait time to be reunited with a bag will fall, and sales of AirTags will rise, especially with the upcoming holidays,” Scott Keyes, founder and chief flight expert of flight deals site Going, told Afar.
If you haven’t already tried AirTags to keep dibs on your bags, now is an ideal time to grab some. The devices, which usually retail for $29 for a single device, are currently on sale on Amazon for $19 each or $70 for a four-pack (normally $99).
