Struggling with Misplaced Luggage? Share Your AirTag's Location with These Airline Companies
Struggling with Misplaced Luggage? Share Your AirTag's Location with These Airline Companies
Apple is simplifying the process of locating misplaced luggage for travelers with a fresh feature that enables you to share your AirTag's location with airlines. This feature generates a shareable link that you can forward to airlines or anyone else involved in the pursuit of your lost belongings. AirTag, a popular tool for tracking luggage, vehicles, and other valuable items, functions through this link for a specified period.
Here's how to share your AirTag's location if you ever find yourself separated from your luggage:
Which Airlines Can You Share Your AirTag Location With?
Initially, three airlines - United Airlines, Delta, and Air Canada - have agreed to accept AirTag location sharing from Apple users. However, as suggested by a post from Apple's senior vice president of marketing, Greg Joswiak, more airlines are expected to join the list soon.
It's important to note that Apple's sharing service does not provide a direct connection to report missing luggage to airlines. Instead, you'll need to create a sharing link (instructions below) and contact your airline's lost luggage team.
A post from Delta suggests that you can use the Fly Delta app to facilitate the process.
How To Share Your AirTag Location
- Launch the Find My app.
- Select Items.
- Click on the appropriate AirTag (a small 'i' icon appears next to the label on a Mac map).
- Click on 'Lost AirTag' and then 'Share Item Location' (avoid the similarly-named option to Share AirTag, which allows others to borrow the tracker).
- Follow the on-screen instructions, and a link will be generated for sharing with airlines or others.
For a designated period, the companies or individuals you share the link with will be able to view the AirTag's location on a map via any web browser, potentially aiding in the recovery of your lost items.
Even though the link-sharing feature allows you to share your AirTag's location, it does not guarantee that the tracker is actively transmitting its position. The AirTag system relies on nearby Apple devices to report its location. In densely populated areas such as airports, this shouldn't pose a problem; however, in less crowded areas with fewer iPhones, it may prove less reliable.
Nonetheless, the capability to share an AirTag's location with others represents a significant improvement over the prior method, in which users frequently sent screenshots of the AirTag's location. These screenshots quickly became outdated, while the live tracking provided by Apple allows airline representatives to view the current position of the misplaced item as long as it can send a signal.
It's also noteworthy that Apple continues to add new features to the AirTag, despite receiving minimal attention since its launch in 2021. The existing AirTag hardware remains unchanged from the original release, leading to concerns that Apple had essentially discontinued the device following reports of its use for privacy invasions. My colleague, Tom Brewster, revealed last year that the DEA had employed AirTag as a surveillance tool.
The new option to share your AirTag location indicates that Apple is not abandoning the tracker.
To utilize the AirTag location sharing feature with Delta, follow the steps provided in this guide. After sharing your AirTag's location, you can also leverage the Fly Delta app to facilitate communication with Delta's lost luggage team.
While there are currently three airlines - United Airlines, Delta, and Air Canada - participating in AirTag location sharing, Apple's senior vice president of marketing, Greg Joswiak, hints at more airlines joining the list soon.