AirTags in luggage help travelers find lost bags but can’t fix airlines

Putting AirTags in luggage was one of the things I did as soon as I got mine, and it seems to have become a very popular use of tiny tracking devices.

But while they can be a big help for lost baggage, a number of reported cases show that they still can’t solve the problem of airline incompetence…

We already saw one example of this, back in April, when a British couple returned home with happy memories of their wedding but no luggage.

Luckily, Sharod put an AirTag in each bag to track them on a map. Thanks to the Find My app, the couple discovered that their luggage made it to the first stop in Frankfurt, but never got on the plane to London.

Aer Lingus, the airline responsible for the flight, said the bags would be delivered to Sharod’s home address. The next night, only two of the three packages were delivered.

Find My revealed that the third bag was located in a central London apartment, but despite the fact that the owner gave this information to the airline, it could not be recovered. Finally, after a week, Sharod gave up and contacted the police, who promptly returned the bag.

Luck reports a similar case where a golfer could see the (moving) location of their golf clubs, but the airline still could not reunite them with their owner.

Corey Prenatt’s retirement celebration didn’t go as planned. Instead of enjoying a game of golf with his friends on every known open course across the UK, the 47-year-old wandered the country trying to find his bags after they got lost en route from the US.

Prenatt of Tampa Bay, Florida attached Apple Inc. called AirTags to their golf bag and other luggage to keep track of where they were after they checked in. After landing in the UK, he saw that his bags were still stuck on the runway at Newark Airport, where they remained for two days. Eventually his luggage was sent to a warehouse in Edinburgh, but as he drove there to pick it up, he noticed that his clubs were already on their way to Aberdeen. His AirTag revealed that they were finally in the West Midlands in England. […]

Two months after the trip, and after repeated requests to British Airways and courier companies, Prenatt still hasn’t received his golf bag back. He says it contained over $10,000 worth of equipment, including a $4,000 stick his son gave him as a retirement gift.

Fortunately, there have been happier stories, including an Australian who was able to use AirTag to track down and recover a $7,000 worth of stolen photography kit.

For me, putting AirTags in my luggage gives me a lot of peace of mind while traveling. My last trip to Buenos Aires in March involved hand luggage and it was nice to see the bags make it to the plane and then to the destination airport.

Photo: Yousef Alfuhigi/Unsplash

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