Pretoria News

Everything you need to know about using Airtags to track luggage

THE WASHINGTON POST

AIRLINES have a knack for losing Beverly Ayotte’s checked luggage. So when she heard travellers were using Apple Airtags to track their belongings, she immediately bought two of the coinsize devices and dropped them in her bags before embarking on a Panama Canal cruise.

Sure enough, on her return to Philadelphia, American Airlines lost her baggage.

“I knew something was wrong,” said Ayotte, a retired college professor from New Jersey. “The airline said our luggage was on the bus from Philadelphia to Atlantic City, but I could see that it wasn’t.”

Thanks to new technology, pinpointing the location of your belongings is now affordable and practical for many travellers.

Apple introduced Airtag in early 2021. It isn’t the first luggage tracking system, but arguably the easiest to use.

But, as Ayotte’s story shows, using a tracker won’t necessarily rescue your suitcase. Knowing the whereabouts of your bags can turn into a comedy of errors that leaves you wondering why the airlines don’t lose more.

Last summer, when airlines separated hundreds of thousands of bags from their owners, some travel blogs suggested Airtags would end lost luggage. But in the months since then, it’s become clear the issue is a little more complicated. For starters, Airtags only work with an iphone. Then there were rumours that several airlines had banned tracking devices.

And buying a tracker can lead to other questions: Where, exactly, do you put one in your luggage? How many trackers do you need? And do you still have to label your bags?

Here are the answers:

Where do missing bags go?

After buying and activating her Airtags, Ayotte began following her luggage through her departing flight and cruise. On the way back, when American Airlines claimed her luggage was on a bus for Atlantic City, her iphone told her otherwise.

“The tags located both pieces in Philadelphia,” she says.

Ayotte called American. A representative claimed the bags were in Miami, where her flight had originated. After a long wait, the airline delivered her husband’s luggage.

But an Airtag still showed her luggage in Philadelphia. Her airline claimed it was in Austin.

“This went on for days,” she says. “Finally, my luggage started moving again. It stopped at a private residence near the Philadelphia airport.”

Ayotte thought someone had stolen her bag, but a quick online search revealed that the home belonged to a luggage delivery service. A day later, someone showed up at her doorstep with her long-lost luggage.

Ayotte’s case is common for tracked luggage. Her Airtag allowed her to keep tabs on the airline as it tried to find and recover her bag. And if the airline had declared her luggage lost, she could have provided it with a location.

When an airline declares your bag lost, it stops searching for your property and will reimburse you for the value of your possessions. When there’s no way of identifying the owner, bags tend to end up at the Unclaimed Baggage store.

Have Airtags reduced lost luggage?

Not yet. In 2021, the first year the tracking devices were available, domestic airlines lost an average of 5.07 bags per 1 000 passenger enplanements, according to the Transportation Department – up 23% from 2020. And for the first nine months of 2022, the number of mishandled bags rose another 20%.

TRAVEL

en-za

2023-02-04T08:00:00.0000000Z

2023-02-04T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://pretorianews.pressreader.com/article/281973201803197

African News Agency