Apple AirTags have been a great tool to ensure your bag is with you when you’re flying and to help you find it should it go missing. However, it’s use has always been limited to your own. That is, until now, as you can now share your bag location with airlines to help them locate it and (theoretically) reunite it with you quicker.
Few things will ruin your day like a lost bag. That’s why I keep one in my checked bag so that I can see that my bag made it onto the aircraft with me and to hopefully help me track it down if it goes missing. But as I mentioned in the post’s intro, that second part was kind of complex, as you couldn’t exactly tell the airline where your bag is, nor would they listen to you most of the time if you tried. However, when you travel with select airlines, this is no longer an issue, as you can now share your bag location with airlines that are participating in Apple’s new program.
The feature to share your bag location with airlines seems to be another implementation of Apple’s Find My app’s Share My Location feature. Only, this one is called Share Item Location. This is the mechanism that Apple uses to help airlines find your bag. However, in order to take advantage of this capability, airlines needed to adopt technology solutions of their own. As such, this awesome feature isn’t available on most airlines. Currently, a rather small list of airlines are participating, including:
- United
- Delta
- British Airways
- Lufthansa
- Air Canada
- Air New Zealand
- Turkish Airlines
- Aer Lingus
- Austrian Airlines
- Brussels Airlines
- Swiss
- Eurowings
- Iberia Airlines
As you can see, several of the above airlines are part of the same ownership group, such as British, Aer Lingus, and Iberia, as well as Lufthansa, Austrian, Brussels, Swiss, and Eurowings. Actually, seeing that second group on this list is rather ironic, as Lufthansa tried to ban AirTags in checked bags. But I digress.
How airlines offer this capability will likely differ. But in United’s case, customers can share their bag location securely with customer service agents via the United app. This ability to share is built into the app’s delayed baggage report function and will be disabled once the customer is reunited with their bag, once seven days pass, or once the customer decides to end sharing the location.
It’s worth noting that this Share Item Location function isn’t limited to just AirTags – anything with Find My service can be used. However, you really shouldn’t be leaving valuables like your laptop in your checked bag (nor are you allowed to leave that quantity of lithium-ion batteries in there), so if you want to use this function, please buy an AirTag.
Now, beyond a compatible device, you do need to have an iOS device on at least iOS 18.2 to use Share Item Location. So, for those of you who have an older iPhone that doesn’t support iOS18, this capability won’t work for you. But if you travel often, it’s probably worth upgrading your device to take advantage of this new feature.
Final Thoughts
I think it’s great that you can now share your bag location with airlines. This should help make the recovery process a lot easier, though I’d also caution you to keep your expectations reasonable. If, for example, your bag went from San Francisco to Houston but was supposed to go to Newark, you probably aren’t going to see your bag until the next day—it depends on how quickly they can find its precise location, pull it, and get it onto a flight heading your way. Regardless, this is an excellent use of Apple’s tech and one that should help in lost bag recovery.