The IT Nerd

According to Boing Boing, the German airline Lufthansa has banned AirTags in luggage:

Lufthansa argues that baggage trackers fall in the category of portable electronic devices, and are therefore subject to dangerous goods regulations issued by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). This is specifically because of the transmission function. Lufthansa claims that the transmission function needs to be turned off during flight when in checked luggage, just as is required for cell phones, laptops, etc.

And the airline’s twitter feed has seemingly confirmed this:

The Boing Boing article has an alternate view:

My first thought is that I’m not surprised to see Lufthansa be the first airline to add a ban like this. Lufthansa isn’t exactly a customer-friendly airline, and the airline has had an awful summer when it comes to lost bags (I even had a delayed Lufthansa bag experience). AirTags empower travelers in terms of knowing exactly where their bags are, and I imagine that’s something some airlines don’t actually like. If you look at Twitter, you’ll see a ton of people expressing frustration with Lufthansa because they know exactly where their checked bag is, while the airline refuses to help.

I’ve wondered why it took this long for an airline to do this. After all they don’t want to be called out on losing luggage seeing as lost luggage has become insanely common these days. So if they can find any excuse to ban AirTags, they will.

Here’s the other part of this, how will they enforce this? Are they going to come up with some sort of scanner to find them? And if they do find them, will they remove them or remove the passenger? Also does this also apply to Tile or Chipolo products? They do the same thing as AirTags, but don’t have the network that AirTags have. I guess that they’re not afraid of those products catching them out when it comes to losing passenger’s bags.

I’m pretty sure that AirTags will continue to be used by passengers, which will lead to more stories of passengers tracking their lost luggage and calling out airlines due to that. I’m also pretty sure that as this story gets out, Lufthansa will get a whole lot of bad press which may make them rethink this ban. And that will make other airlines think against doing something similar.

This entry was posted on October 9, 2022 at 5:18 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.