There’s good news if you’re one of the growing number of travelers who like to keep tabs on checked airline luggage by using Apple’s AirTags.
The little battery-powered tracking pucks, which cost $20–$30 each, can be slipped into anything a traveler wants to track the location of. Owners of AirTags can use their iPhones or other Apple devices to keep abreast of the AirTag’s location—a neat trick that many flyers use to make sure their bags, wheelchairs, or other crucial belongings never stray far.
Up to now, if an airline or other travel provider misplaced AirTag-enabled luggage, passengers had to try to explain where their bags were last detected by using a map that only the passenger could see. That’s because as a security feature, only each AirTag’s owner is privy to the location of their item.
But on Monday, Nov. 11, Apple announced the rollout of Share Item Location, which allows travelers to choose someone to show the current location of an AirTag. If any airline, shipping agent, or other travel-related porter loses your bag, you’ll be able to send them a link that remotely displays a map to your stuff’s last known location.
The ability to share a link instantly to a map for your wandering AirTag will make it much easier and faster for travel vendors to track down errant possessions and return them to you.
In fact, Apple says, more than a dozen airlines have already signed up to use the system.
“In the coming months, more than 15 airlines serving millions of people globally—including 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—will begin accepting Find My item locations as part of their customer service process for locating mishandled or delayed bags,” Apple announced in a statement.
American Airlines is the only one of the Big Three U.S. carriers not yet participating. None of the major no-frills carriers based in the U.S. have announced participation yet either.
Apple said the system will debut at a few airports in late 2024 before a planned global rollout in 2025. Travelers who already own AirTags will be able to use their existing devices without having to upgrade.
For privacy, Share Item Location links will only be available to a small number of people, and any airline worker or baggage handler who tries to open the shared link will be required to authenticate in order to view it.
“Additionally, SITA, a leader in air transport technology, will build support for Share Item Location into WorldTracer, the baggage-tracing system used by over 500 airlines and ground handlers at more than 2,800 airports around the world,” Apple’s announcement promised.
That’s just the airlines, but hopefully other travel providers will join up, too. In 2022, my cruise voyage on the Disney Wish sailed from port without my luggage. I couldn’t convince anyone in customer service at Disney Cruise Line to consult the map on my smartphone that showed my bag had been forgotten by Disney’s porter service.
If the Share Item Location program had existed then and Disney participated, I could have simply shown a staff member a special link that revealed, within a few feet, where my overlooked luggage had been sitting all along—and I wouldn’t have had to wear hastily purchased T-shirts from the souvenir shop for the entire cruise.
Two years ago, the online rumor mill erroneously claimed that the big airlines were about to ban Apple AirTags. That just goes to show you shouldn’t always believe what you read online. Instead, the major carriers are validating AirTags in a major publicized partnership—and lost luggage should become easier to recover.