Each year millions of travelers arrive at airports around the world hoping to grab their luggage and quickly begin enjoying they vacations or starting their business meetings. Also each year, millions of bags go missing at airports everywhere, and unfortunately for travelers whose luggage is lost, this means an interrupted itinerary and additional travel stress.
Though travelers cannot necessarily stop their luggage from being lost across international airport systems, new technology allows savvy travelers to track their luggage. Apple has recently unveiled a new feature allowing users to share their AirTag location with third parties, including airlines. This will be accessible through the app’s “Share Item Location” feature.
So what does this mean for travelers? It’s essentially a personal insurance plan for your luggage. Though airlines use bag tags to track bags’ locations, a portion of bags are never found or returned to their owners. By attaching an Air Tag to their luggage, travelers can share the bag’s live location with the airline and track their luggage.
Those traveling in groups can share the location of their Air Tag and luggage via a link that connects to an interactive map. The link can be disabled at any time or will expire when travelers retrieve their luggage.
Apple will integrate their new service at airline customer service desks at 15 airlines, including Delta and United, according to an Apple press release.
Tech giant and leader in air transport technology, SITA, will build support for this Apple function into WorldTracer, a baggage-tracing system used by over 500 airlines and ground handlers at more than 2,800 airports around the world, according to Apple’s release.
SITA’s Director of Baggage, Nicole Hogg, commented on the development: “As the leading industry provider for end-to-end baggage management solutions, and with global passenger traffic set to double by 2040, airports and airlines worldwide will face important challenges. This collaboration with Apple will make it easy for airlines that use our industry-leading WorldTracer solution to implement Share Item Location for more efficient baggage management, and will be a huge benefit for passengers.”
