#FindMyBag: Sự thay đổi đáng kể của các thiết bị theo dõi hành lý đơn giản để trở thành phụ kiện du lịch HOT nhất.
Trong hỗn loạn du lịch sau đại dịch, một người hùng đã xuất hiện. Không đáng chú ý và ẩn dưới vỏ bọc, người anh hùng này đã dành phần lớn thời gian qua để du hành khắp thế giới, can thiệp khi hãng hàng không gặp rắc rối để cứu những kỳ nghỉ quý báu của mọi người. Tên gọi của nó? Có nhiều cách gọi. Đối với bạn, nó có thể là Tile, Chipolo, Pebblebee hoặc phiên bản nổi tiếng nhất của nó – AirTag. Đúng vậy: nhỏ gọn, dễ dàng mang theo và có khả năng cứu vụ việc mất hành lý đáng tiếc, phụ kiện du lịch HOT nhất hiện tại chính là thiết bị theo dõi hành lý khiêm tốn.
Chúng ta đã chứng kiến tháng này qua tháng khác, sau khi các hãng hàng không và sân bay cho thôi việc nhân viên, tạo ra sự hỗn loạn du lịch suốt năm 2022. Số lượng nhân viên xử lý hành lý không đủ và số lượng du khách ngày càng tăng dẫn đến việc hành lý không được tải lên các chuyến bay, hành lý không được tháo xuống nhanh chóng đúng lúc, hàng ngàn hành lý không được chủ nhân chăm sóc chồng lên nhau ở các sân bay – và rất nhiều trong số chúng bị mất. Tỷ lệ xử lý hành lý sai lầm đã tăng 74,7% so với năm trước đó, theo dữ liệu từ SITA, công ty cung cấp các giải pháp công nghệ thông tin (bao gồm theo dõi hành lý) cho ngành hàng không. Trên mỗi 1.000 hành lý lên đường, có 7,6 hành lý bị mất trong năm ngoái, so với 4,35 trên 1.000 người vào năm 2021 và 5,6 trên 1.000 người vào năm 2019. Hành lý cho các chuyến bay quốc tế có khả năng bị xử lý sai lầm lên đến tám lần so với các chuyến bay nội địa, do khả năng chuyển hàng (sự kết nối chiếm gần một nửa số sự cố). Tuy nhiên, bạn không cần phải có một lịch trình phức tạp để hãng hàng không mất hành lý của bạn – 17% hành lý bị xử lý sai lầm trong năm 2022 đơn giản chỉ là không bao giờ được tải lên máy bay.
Thomas Romig, phó Chủ tịch Uỷ ban An toàn, Bảo mật và Hoạt động của Hội đồng Sân bay Quốc tế (ACI), đã viết trong một báo cáo cho SITA trong năm nay rằng: “Sự tăng đột biến trong du lịch đã dẫn đến những sự cố tăng lên, được cộng dồn do thiếu hụt nhân viên chuyên nghiệp”. Và năm 2023 có thể còn tồi tệ hơn, theo Rory Boland, biên tập viên tạp chí tiêu dùng Which? Travel ở Vương quốc Anh.
“Vấn đề mất hành lý vẫn còn rất nghiêm trọng trong năm nay, và điều này có thể còn tồi tệ hơn trong giai đoạn du lịch cao điểm trong mùa hè này. Đó không chỉ là một số hành lý bị mất mà là những chuyến bay cất cánh mà không có hành lý vì thiếu quá nhân viên làm việc so với số lượng hành lý cần phải tải lên trong thời gian quy định”, ông cảnh báo.
Nếu việc mất một chiếc hành lý không nghe có vẻ là điều tồi tệ nhất có thể xảy ra trong kỳ nghỉ, điều đó có nghĩa là bạn chưa từng mất một chiếc. “Nếu bạn đã từng bị mất hành lý một lần, có lẽ bạn sẽ mãi mãi sợ hãi”, nói Kate Bevan, nhà văn công nghệ, người đã mất hành lý hai lần.
Nếu bạn may mắn, bạn sẽ nhận được một cuộc gọi hoặc một email cho biết hành lý của bạn đã được tìm thấy. Nếu không, bạn sẽ đợi mãi mãi, luôn tự hỏi xem đã xảy ra chuyện gì với chiếc hành lý đó. Nhưng nếu bạn đặt một thiết bị theo dõi bên trong, như nhiều người khác đang tìm thấy, bạn có thể cho hãng hàng không biết nó ở đâu. Và mặc dù biết nó ở đâu không đảm bảo rằng bạn sẽ nhận được nó trở lại, nhưng bạn có nhiều cơ hội đấu tranh hơn. “Đối với tôi, các thiết bị theo dõi là thiết yếu vì chúng giúp bạn giúp hãng hàng không tìm thấy hành lý nhanh hơn, nhưng cũng mang lại sự yên tâm rằng bạn sẽ nhận lại đồ đạc của mình sau một thời gian”, Boland nói.
Một chiếc PowerPoint để tìm lại hành lý của mình
Jai Rawat đang trở về nhà từ sân bay London Heathrow đến San Francisco vào tháng 1 khi hành lý của anh bị mất. Hai ngày sau chuyến bay, hãng hàng không của anh, Virgin Atlantic, gửi email cho biết hành lý đã được tìm thấy và sẽ được trả lại “sớm”. Tuy nhiên, 9 ngày sau chuyến bay của anh, AirTag của anh vẫn đang hiển thị ở Heathrow. Rawat – CEO của Zinrelo, công ty cung cấp các chương trình trung thành cho các thương hiệu – đã gửi ảnh chụp màn hình vị trí hành lý mà không nhận được hồi đáp. Virgin cho biết nhân viên đang “cố gắng tìm thấy hành lý” – mặc dù anh đã chỉ cho họ chính xác nơi nó đang ở. Trong tuyệt vọng, sau 34 ngày, anh đã tạo ra một bài trình bày PowerPoint, có tựa đề “Gợi ý hữu ích để tìm vali của tôi”. Thông qua tài liệu bao gồm mô tả chi tiết về hành lý và bao gồm bản đồ, hình ảnh từ Google Streetview và một bản đồ chú thích của Terminal 4 Heathrow, đánh dấu tòa nhà chính mà anh kết luận là nơi có hành lý. Đó không phải là công việc bị vội vã – Rawat nói rằng anh đã “dành nhiều giờ tìm kiếm trên internet bản đồ sân bay” và đặt bản đồ vị trí AirTag lên chúng. Anh nói rằng mình đã “tuyệt vọng” vì vali chứa một món quý giá thuộc sở hữu của con gái mình. Kết quả là, ba ngày sau đó, chiếc hành lý đã đến nhà anh ở California. Nó đã được mở ra và “một số thứ” đã bị mất – nhưng anh đã được hoàn tiền cho chúng sau 10 ngày khi đệ trình yêu cầu.
Đây là
Nguồn: https://www.kcra.com/article/luggage-trackers-travel-accessory/44256204
Out of the post-pandemic travel chaos, a hero has emerged.Unassuming and undercover, this hero has spent much of the past year traveling the globe, stepping in when airlines mess up to save people’s precious vacations. Its name? Well, it goes by a few. To you, it may be Tile, Chipolo, Pebblebee or – its best-known incarnation – AirTag. That’s right: compact, portable and potentially snatching your perfect vacation from the jaws of lost luggage disaster, the travel accessory of the moment is the humble luggage tracker. Video above: AirTag helps family find their stolen carWe’ve seen it month after month, after airlines and airports laying off staff led to travel chaos throughout 2022. Not enough baggage handlers and exploding numbers of travelers meant bags not being loaded onto planes, bags not being taken fast enough off planes, unattended bags piling up by the thousands in airports – and many of them lost. The bag mishandling rate was up 74.7% in 2022 compared to the previous year, according to data from SITA, which offers various IT solutions (including baggage tracking) for the aviation industry. Out of every 1,000 bags to take to the skies, 7.6 were lost last year, compared to 4.35 per 1,000 in 2021 and 5.6 per 1,000 in 2019. Bags for international flights are eight times as likely to be mishandled than those on domestic flights, due to the likelihood of them being transferred (connections account for nearly half the incidents). However, you don’t have to have a complex itinerary for the airline to lose your bag – a whopping 17% of mishandled bags in 2022 were simply never loaded onto the plane in the first place.“The sudden surge in travel has led to increased disruptions that are compounded by a shortage of skilled staff,” Thomas Romig, vice president for safety, security and operations of the Airports Council International (ACI) wrote in a report this year for SITA. And 2023 could be even worse, according to Rory Boland, editor of UK-based consumer magazine Which? Travel.“There remain significant problems with lost luggage this year, and this is likely to be worse still in the peak travel period this summer. That’s not just the odd bag going missing, but planes taking off with no luggage because staff shortages meant it wasn’t possible to load them in time,” he warns.If losing a bag doesn’t sound like the worst thing that could happen on vacation, that probably means you haven’t ever lost one. “If you’ve lost a bag once you’re probably scarred for life,” says tech writer Kate Bevan, to whom it’s happened twice.If you’re lucky, you’ll get a call or an email saying your missing bag has been located. If you’re not, you’ll be waiting indefinitely, always wondering what happened to that piece of luggage. But if you put a tracking device inside it, as more and more people are finding, you can tell the airline where it is. And while knowing where it is doesn’t guarantee you’ll get it back, you have more of a fighting chance. “For me, tracking devices are essential because they help you help the airline find your luggage faster, but also offer peace of mind that you will get your belongings back at some stage,” says Boland.A PowerPoint presentation to recover his bagJai Rawat was traveling home from London Heathrow to San Francisco in January when his bag went missing. Two days later, his airline, Virgin Atlantic, emailed to say that the bag had been located and would be returned to him “soon.”Yet nine days after his flight, his AirTag was still showing at Heathrow. Rawat – CEO of Zinrelo, which powers loyalty programs for brands – sent screenshots of its location to no avail. Virgin said that staff were “trying to locate the bag” – despite him showing them exactly where it was. In desperation, after 34 days, he created a PowerPoint presentation, entitled “Helpful hints to find my suitcase.”The six-page document gave a detailed description of the bag, and included maps, satellite photos, Google Streetview screenshots and an annotated map of Heathrow Terminal 4, marking the exact building which he deduced the bag was in. It was no rush job – Rawat says he “spent a few hours scouring the internet for airport maps,” overlaying his AirTag location map against them. He was, he says, “desperate,” as the bag contained a precious item belonging to his daughter.The result? Three days later, the bag arrived at his home in California. It had been opened, and “several things” were missing – but he was refunded for them 10 days after making a claim.This was the first time he’d used a tracking device, and Rawat says he was surprised at how long Virgin Atlantic took to find the bag.“I thought that since the exact location was visible via AirTag, the airline should be able to find it easily. It was really frustrating that they were having a hard time finding the bag even after I gave them all the information – it felt that they were just not putting in enough effort,” he says. Possibly because he was one of many: “At one point the agent I was emailing with told me that the building had thousands of lost bags,” he said. ‘Airlines do too little’“Ultimately, AirTags give travelers the peace of mind of knowing where their most prized possessions are at all times,” says Emily McNutt, senior travel editor at CNN Underscored, which has named the trackers the “ultimate travel companion this summer.” The site has also compared AirTags against Tiles and Samsung Galaxy SmartTags, as well as reviewing Chipolo products. “In years past, that luxury was largely unavailable as travelers had to wait for the airline to let them know where their bag was – and that could often be hard for airline representatives to actually track down,” she says.“While AirTags aren’t perfect (they rely on Apple’s ‘Find My’ network, so they’re not as reliable in scarcely populated areas), they’ve given travelers the power of knowing exactly where their bag is in many cases before airline representatives can do the same.”Boland says travelers are taking matters into their own hands for one reason: “Too many airlines do far too little to track bags down in a timely manner.Video below: Can Apple AirTags really find your lost items?“Anyone who has had an airline lose their bags will know that you are often fobbed off with no answer as to where your luggage is and when you might be reunited with it. “Passengers pay increasingly large amounts of money to many airlines to transport luggage, so it is completely unacceptable that it’s down to the passenger to tell the airline where it lost the bag.” ‘The police never called me’ Elliot Sharod was one of the first to go viral for tracking his lost luggage through its AirTag. In April 2022, he and his wife were returning from their wedding in South Africa when one of their bags – containing mementos from the ceremony – was lost. Thanks to his AirTag, Sharod could see where it was. But Aer Lingus – which had lost the bag – wasn’t replying. In desperation, Sharod made a PowerPoint presentation and tweeted it at the airline. It swiftly went viral.Not that Aer Lingus got the case back for the unhappy couple. Eventually, the pair traced it to a shed outside a block of residential apartments in London and called the police, who broke in and recovered it. More than a year on, Sharod’s unimpressed by how it all panned out.The bag was “ripped to shreds – everything that could have identified us was destroyed,” he says. Their order of service and table settings from the wedding were gone, as were his wife’s perfume, hair straighteners and “anything they could sell.” Only clothes were left.So what happened next? Not a lot, as it happened. “The police said they’d call me in for a statement but that never happened. They didn’t take it further and neither did the airline,” he says.Sharod says he sent a 12-page document to Aer Lingus outlining the saga and was asked “What was it we were looking for?”“I just said frankly we’re six weeks on, I’d just like an apology and I’d like everything that was stolen to be replaced.”The airline paid them around $1,000 compensation and threw in lounge access on a forthcoming flight, but refused to share more details, calling it an internal matter.Sharod now goes carry-on only wherever possible, even on two-week trips. Google enters the game AirTags may be in the news, but they’re not the only trackers available. However, until now, alternatives such as Tile or Chipolo haven’t been perhaps as useful – because of how they work.Lose your bag with an AirTag in it, and the tracker uses Apple’s global network to locate itself – meaning that any iPhone user passing by will passively locate it. Other brands, however, rely on other users of their same network – so if your missing bag has a Tile in it, the only way it’ll ping is if another Tile user is nearby. The closest so far has been the Samsung Galaxy smart tag, which works with Samsung phones – which account for over one in five. But in May, Google announced that later this year, its Find My Device “ecosystem” would be upgraded to work with trackers including Tile, Chipolo and Pebblebee – making it the largest network in the world. It’ll also alert you if an unknown tracker starts moving with you. (Some tracking devices have been used in stalking cases; Apple and Google are working together on an industry-wide effort to help limit the risk of Bluetooth devices being used for unwanted tracking.)Bevan says that Google opening up its network is a game-changer. “In the rest of the world , Android has much higher penetration ,” she says. “Google doing this is a big deal.”The company is also rumored to be working on its own tracker device, codenamed Grogu.Safety firstAre tracking devices safe? That’s a question the aviation industry appears to have been battling. Lithium batteries, of course, are banned from traveling in the hold, and lithium fires are a regular occurrence in the cabin – the FAA’s running tally of lithium battery incidents “involving smoke, fire or extreme heat” is already at 25 for 2023, with 74 logged in 2022. Both Lufthansa and Air New Zealand seemingly banned bag trackers in the hold last year – before swiftly reversing the ban in both cases. (Lufthansa told CNN that the airline never banned them – although their social media team had said that trackers were “classified as dangerous” and “cannot be used.”) The FAA isn’t concerned, however. Its rules say that metal batteries containing less than 0.3 grams (0.01 ounces) of lithium are OK in checked luggage. Trackers have less – AirTags, for example, contain just over 0.1 grams and Tiles contain less than 0.1 grams on average, according to a spokesperson. Video below: Iowa man arrested on stalking charges after allegedly placing AirTags on woman’s carAirlines going DIYTracking your bags yourself can never hurt, but some airlines are offering similar services. SITA offers a Bag Journey service to airlines, which tracks luggage at four stages of the process, and offers airlines the chance to share real-time data with passengers. Just 25% of airlines have taken them up on this so far, but SITA says that 67% of airlines plan to allow passenger access by 2025. The company has also developed a system that automatically identifies bags unlikely to make their connecting flight, and rebooks them on the next one, keeping the existing bag tag, while keeping the passenger informed. Again, though, it’s up to the airlines to buy into it.“SITA is committed to working with the industry to ensure passengers are once again confident to check in their baggage,” CEO David Lavorel wrote in the company’s 2023 “Baggage IT Insights” report.Meanwhile, Delta passengers who use the airline’s app have received push notifications about their bags’ progress since 2016. The airline uses RFID technology in its bag tags. Taking back controlFor Sharod, personal tracking devices have “given the power back to passengers.”“It’s changed how airlines have to interact with passengers,” he says. “They can’t hide behind generic responses on Twitter. They can’t keep pieing people off because we know where our bags are.”He hopes that “AirTag awareness… has pushed airlines to look at their internal processes – and if they want to protect their reputations, hopefully that will benefit passengers. Ultimately, it should lead to it being better.”For Bevan, the devices haven’t yet changed the way we travel, but says they “take one of the stresses out of traveling.”So how to give yourself the best chance of getting your luggage back?All our case studies, of course, advise buying a tracking device. And, perhaps, disguising it. Sharod’s wife hid the couple’s tags in balled-up clothing. “If you just chuck it in, you run the risk of finding it,” he says. Luggage brand Samsara makes cases with hidden, and relatively indestructible slots for tracking devices – but so far they’re only carry-on size. The brand is working on larger versions.Rawat advises photographing the bag at check-in, making an inventory of what’s in it, and writing your contact details on a piece of paper to put inside – as well as on a nametag outside.And don’t forget that the majority of people do get their bags back. Last year, four out of five bags that didn’t arrive on time were merely delayed, rather than lost entirely, according to SITA’s data. Just 7% were lost or stolen – the rest were damaged or had items stolen from them. Meanwhile, Boland – who never travels these days without a tracker – has a novel proposition to change the industry: “Airlines should refund passengers fees when they lose bags, as this would work as an incentive for them to reduce the number of misplaced pieces of luggage.”
Out of the post-pandemic travel chaos, a hero has emerged.
Unassuming and undercover, this hero has spent much of the past year traveling the globe, stepping in when airlines mess up to save people’s precious vacations.
Its name? Well, it goes by a few. To you, it may be Tile, Chipolo, Pebblebee or – its best-known incarnation – AirTag. That’s right: compact, portable and potentially snatching your perfect vacation from the jaws of lost luggage disaster, the travel accessory of the moment is the humble luggage tracker.
Video above: AirTag helps family find their stolen car
We’ve seen it month after month, after airlines and airports laying off staff led to travel chaos throughout 2022. Not enough baggage handlers and exploding numbers of travelers meant bags not being loaded onto planes, bags not being taken fast enough off planes, unattended bags piling up by the thousands in airports – and many of them lost.
The bag mishandling rate was up 74.7% in 2022 compared to the previous year, according to data from SITA, which offers various IT solutions (including baggage tracking) for the aviation industry. Out of every 1,000 bags to take to the skies, 7.6 were lost last year, compared to 4.35 per 1,000 in 2021 and 5.6 per 1,000 in 2019.
Bags for international flights are eight times as likely to be mishandled than those on domestic flights, due to the likelihood of them being transferred (connections account for nearly half the incidents). However, you don’t have to have a complex itinerary for the airline to lose your bag – a whopping 17% of mishandled bags in 2022 were simply never loaded onto the plane in the first place.
“The sudden surge in travel has led to increased disruptions that are compounded by a shortage of skilled staff,” Thomas Romig, vice president for safety, security and operations of the Airports Council International (ACI) wrote in a report this year for SITA.
And 2023 could be even worse, according to Rory Boland, editor of UK-based consumer magazine Which? Travel.
“There remain significant problems with lost luggage this year, and this is likely to be worse still in the peak travel period this summer. That’s not just the odd bag going missing, but planes taking off with no luggage because staff shortages meant it wasn’t possible to load them in time,” he warns.
If losing a bag doesn’t sound like the worst thing that could happen on vacation, that probably means you haven’t ever lost one. “If you’ve lost a bag once you’re probably scarred for life,” says tech writer Kate Bevan, to whom it’s happened twice.
If you’re lucky, you’ll get a call or an email saying your missing bag has been located. If you’re not, you’ll be waiting indefinitely, always wondering what happened to that piece of luggage.
But if you put a tracking device inside it, as more and more people are finding, you can tell the airline where it is.
And while knowing where it is doesn’t guarantee you’ll get it back, you have more of a fighting chance.
“For me, tracking devices are essential because they help you help the airline find your luggage faster, but also offer peace of mind that you will get your belongings back at some stage,” says Boland.
A PowerPoint presentation to recover his bag
Jai Rawat was traveling home from London Heathrow to San Francisco in January when his bag went missing. Two days later, his airline, Virgin Atlantic, emailed to say that the bag had been located and would be returned to him “soon.”
Yet nine days after his flight, his AirTag was still showing at Heathrow.
Rawat – CEO of Zinrelo, which powers loyalty programs for brands – sent screenshots of its location to no avail. Virgin said that staff were “trying to locate the bag” – despite him showing them exactly where it was.
In desperation, after 34 days, he created a PowerPoint presentation, entitled “Helpful hints to find my suitcase.”
The six-page document gave a detailed description of the bag, and included maps, satellite photos, Google Streetview screenshots and an annotated map of Heathrow Terminal 4, marking the exact building which he deduced the bag was in.
It was no rush job – Rawat says he “spent a few hours scouring the internet for airport maps,” overlaying his AirTag location map against them. He was, he says, “desperate,” as the bag contained a precious item belonging to his daughter.
The result? Three days later, the bag arrived at his home in California. It had been opened, and “several things” were missing – but he was refunded for them 10 days after making a claim.
This was the first time he’d used a tracking device, and Rawat says he was surprised at how long Virgin Atlantic took to find the bag.
“I thought that since the exact location was visible via AirTag, the airline should be able to find it easily. It was really frustrating that they were having a hard time finding the bag even after I gave them all the information – it felt that they were just not putting in enough effort,” he says. Possibly because he was one of many: “At one point the agent I was emailing with told me that the building had thousands of lost bags,” he said.
‘Airlines do too little’
“Ultimately, AirTags give travelers the peace of mind of knowing where their most prized possessions are at all times,” says Emily McNutt, senior travel editor at CNN Underscored, which has named the trackers the “ultimate travel companion this summer.” The site has also compared AirTags against Tiles and Samsung Galaxy SmartTags, as well as reviewing Chipolo products.
“In years past, that luxury was largely unavailable as travelers had to wait for the airline to let them know where their bag was – and that could often be hard for airline representatives to actually track down,” she says.
“While AirTags aren’t perfect (they rely on Apple’s ‘Find My’ network, so they’re not as reliable in scarcely populated areas), they’ve given travelers the power of knowing exactly where their bag is in many cases before airline representatives can do the same.”
Boland says travelers are taking matters into their own hands for one reason: “Too many airlines do far too little to track bags down in a timely manner.
Video below: Can Apple AirTags really find your lost items?
“Anyone who has had an airline lose their bags will know that you are often fobbed off with no answer as to where your luggage is and when you might be reunited with it.
“Passengers pay increasingly large amounts of money to many airlines to transport luggage, so it is completely unacceptable that it’s down to the passenger to tell the airline where it lost the bag.”
‘The police never called me’
Elliot Sharod was one of the first to go viral for tracking his lost luggage through its AirTag.
In April 2022, he and his wife were returning from their wedding in South Africa when one of their bags – containing mementos from the ceremony – was lost.
Thanks to his AirTag, Sharod could see where it was. But Aer Lingus – which had lost the bag – wasn’t replying.
In desperation, Sharod made a PowerPoint presentation and tweeted it at the airline. It swiftly went viral.
Not that Aer Lingus got the case back for the unhappy couple. Eventually, the pair traced it to a shed outside a block of residential apartments in London and called the police, who broke in and recovered it.
More than a year on, Sharod’s unimpressed by how it all panned out.
The bag was “ripped to shreds – everything that could have identified us was destroyed,” he says. Their order of service and table settings from the wedding were gone, as were his wife’s perfume, hair straighteners and “anything they could sell.” Only clothes were left.
So what happened next? Not a lot, as it happened. “The police said they’d call me in for a statement but that never happened. They didn’t take it further and neither did the airline,” he says.
Sharod says he sent a 12-page document to Aer Lingus outlining the saga and was asked “What was it we were looking for?”
“I just said frankly we’re six weeks on, I’d just like an apology and I’d like everything that was stolen to be replaced.”
The airline paid them around $1,000 compensation and threw in lounge access on a forthcoming flight, but refused to share more details, calling it an internal matter.
Sharod now goes carry-on only wherever possible, even on two-week trips.
Google enters the game
AirTags may be in the news, but they’re not the only trackers available. However, until now, alternatives such as Tile or Chipolo haven’t been perhaps as useful – because of how they work.
Lose your bag with an AirTag in it, and the tracker uses Apple’s global network to locate itself – meaning that any iPhone user passing by will passively locate it. Other brands, however, rely on other users of their same network – so if your missing bag has a Tile in it, the only way it’ll ping is if another Tile user is nearby. The closest so far has been the Samsung Galaxy smart tag, which works with Samsung phones – which account for over one in five.
But in May, Google announced that later this year, its Find My Device “ecosystem” would be upgraded to work with trackers including Tile, Chipolo and Pebblebee – making it the largest network in the world. It’ll also alert you if an unknown tracker starts moving with you. (Some tracking devices have been used in stalking cases; Apple and Google are working together on an industry-wide effort to help limit the risk of Bluetooth devices being used for unwanted tracking.)
Bevan says that Google opening up its network is a game-changer. “In the rest of the world (outside the US), Android has much higher penetration (than Apple),” she says. “Google doing this is a big deal.”
The company is also rumored to be working on its own tracker device, codenamed Grogu.
Safety first
Are tracking devices safe? That’s a question the aviation industry appears to have been battling.
Lithium batteries, of course, are banned from traveling in the hold, and lithium fires are a regular occurrence in the cabin – the FAA’s running tally of lithium battery incidents “involving smoke, fire or extreme heat” is already at 25 for 2023, with 74 logged in 2022. Both Lufthansa and Air New Zealand seemingly banned bag trackers in the hold last year – before swiftly reversing the ban in both cases. (Lufthansa told CNN that the airline never banned them – although their social media team had said that trackers were “classified as dangerous” and “cannot be used.”)
The FAA isn’t concerned, however. Its rules say that metal batteries containing less than 0.3 grams (0.01 ounces) of lithium are OK in checked luggage. Trackers have less – AirTags, for example, contain just over 0.1 grams and Tiles contain less than 0.1 grams on average, according to a spokesperson.
Video below: Iowa man arrested on stalking charges after allegedly placing AirTags on woman’s car
Airlines going DIY
Tracking your bags yourself can never hurt, but some airlines are offering similar services.
SITA offers a Bag Journey service to airlines, which tracks luggage at four stages of the process, and offers airlines the chance to share real-time data with passengers. Just 25% of airlines have taken them up on this so far, but SITA says that 67% of airlines plan to allow passenger access by 2025.
The company has also developed a system that automatically identifies bags unlikely to make their connecting flight, and rebooks them on the next one, keeping the existing bag tag, while keeping the passenger informed. Again, though, it’s up to the airlines to buy into it.
“SITA is committed to working with the industry to ensure passengers are once again confident to check in their baggage,” CEO David Lavorel wrote in the company’s 2023 “Baggage IT Insights” report.
Meanwhile, Delta passengers who use the airline’s app have received push notifications about their bags’ progress since 2016. The airline uses RFID technology in its bag tags.
Taking back control
For Sharod, personal tracking devices have “given the power back to passengers.”
“It’s changed how airlines have to interact with passengers,” he says. “They can’t hide behind generic responses on Twitter. They can’t keep pieing people off because we know where our bags are.”
He hopes that “AirTag awareness… has pushed airlines to look at their internal processes – and if they want to protect their reputations, hopefully that will benefit passengers. Ultimately, it should lead to it being better.”
For Bevan, the devices haven’t yet changed the way we travel, but says they “take one of the stresses out of traveling.”
So how to give yourself the best chance of getting your luggage back?
All our case studies, of course, advise buying a tracking device. And, perhaps, disguising it. Sharod’s wife hid the couple’s tags in balled-up clothing. “If you just chuck it in, you run the risk of (a potential thief) finding it,” he says. Luggage brand Samsara makes cases with hidden, and relatively indestructible slots for tracking devices – but so far they’re only carry-on size. The brand is working on larger versions.
Rawat advises photographing the bag at check-in, making an inventory of what’s in it, and writing your contact details on a piece of paper to put inside – as well as on a nametag outside.
And don’t forget that the majority of people do get their bags back. Last year, four out of five bags that didn’t arrive on time were merely delayed, rather than lost entirely, according to SITA’s data. Just 7% were lost or stolen – the rest were damaged or had items stolen from them.
Meanwhile, Boland – who never travels these days without a tracker – has a novel proposition to change the industry: “Airlines should refund passengers fees when they lose bags, as this would work as an incentive for them to reduce the number of misplaced pieces of luggage.”
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