- Major airlines are integrating an Apple AirTag location feature into their bag tracing services.
- Lufthansa and Virgin Atlantic are some of the first to use the feature Apple announced in November.
- Lufthansa, which briefly banned AirTags in 2022, said it’s part of ongoing “digital innovations.”
A number of major airlines are rolling out a new baggage service that will come in handy for anyone using AirTags.
Virgin Atlantic and Lufthansa announced this week that passengers can now share the location of their AirTags with customer service teams to help find and retrieve their lost luggage.
Lufthansa said in a press release that passengers can now “privately and securely” share the location of an AirTag with their baggage tracing service.
“The group’s airlines integrate this information into their systems accordingly and can therefore digitally support baggage tracking,” said the German carrier, which also owns Austrian, Swiss, Brussels Airlines and ITA Airways.
Corneel Koster, COO at Virgin Atlantic, said the innovation would give customers peace of mind on progress to locate a mislaid bag.
Dave Johnson
In November, Apple announced it was working with more than 15 airlines, including United, British Airways, Vueling, and Qantas on incorporating a new “Find My” software feature of iOS 18.2 into their “customer service process for locating mishandled or delayed bags.”
Aviation news site Paddle Your Own Kanoo reports that the AirTag location-sharing feature also has additional security measures. Passengers can stop sharing the AirTag’s location with the airline at any point, and location-sharing ends as soon as bags are returned.
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“We have been able to achieve significant improvements in the last few months in the area of baggage tracing,” said Lufthansa’s Oliver Schmitt. “The integration of our customers’ AirTag data opens up additional possibilities for us to act even more efficiently and quickly.”
Lufthansa’s integration of AirTags into its baggage tracing service comes after the airline briefly banned active AirTags in 2022.
As BI previously reported, the ban was scrapped a few days later after the airline decided the tracking devices did “not pose a safety risk.”
