I have just had a set of these delivered. They look perfect to slip into a piece or two of checked luggage; and will, I am sure, be a help finding lost cases. However, they do have tiny little batteries in them. Would that prohibit me using them in items destined for the hold? Has BA offered any thinking on this yet?

I think this seems the relevant information page https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb...d-restrictions

For batteries up to 100Wh it seems they can be part of your checked in bags if the battery is kept in the device and there are no spares.

Not BA specific but ET discusses some of the reasons it's unlikely to be an issue, and as far as I can tell they're not drastically different from other products that have been around (and not yet banned) for several years.
https://www.executivetraveller.com/n...hecked-baggage

Thanks for asking the question - I have been wondering about these myself!

aks120

Only reason I am getting Airtags are for my checked luggage. Will be ideal for when you land stateside and they dump all the cases off the belt.

Curious for all those considering this - are you thinking of using them as luggage tags outside your bag, or actually putting them in your luggage?

I would worry about someone ripping them off the bag (although my partner has rightfully pointed out "why would someone steal something that could be used to track them down?") but wonder if you could still track if they were inside the luggage.

I'll be leaving mine inside the luggage. Why would you put it on the outside?

My initial thought is that I am going to leave it inside the case. I will test it out though and see how much the range is affected.

Somebody could potentially steal your airtag and then remove the battery. It would be a purely malicious act though as they wouldn't be able to pair it with any other phones once its placed it lost mode, rendering it useless to a would be thief.

Maybe not needed for luggage with an airline baggage tag, but if its on the outside, and somebody finds it they can use NFC which will bring up your contact info so they can get it back to you.

Is that NFC functionality only? I *thought* that if you reported it as lost, it would also do the same via Bluetooth (which should have a good range)?

I would be inclined for inside as well. Apple advertises them, though, like external bag tags.

It will report its location via bluetooth to any iPhone close by but if somebody with a Samsung comes across it, they will be able to see your Airtag use the NFC function to get contact info you set.

I think, based on experience having worked in Baggage-related projects for a few years, that these devices will be next to useless in terms of finding bags, for a number of reasons. Firstly, many Baggage Handling Systems - such as T5 - are buried deep under a lot of concrete and steel. Trials using radio-emitting beacons have proved that, unless there are repeaters of some sort nearby, their range is very limited.

Then there is a fundamental difference between bags being "lost" and bags being "short-shipped". The latter is what happens in the majority of cases when you arrive at destination and bag isn't there. The airline has visibility of where the bag is; they're just pretty rubbish at telling people (and their own employees). Out of a 1,000,000 bags that fly on a good airline, approximately 5,000 will not make it to their destination at the same time as their owner. Out of these 5,000, between 4,900 and 4,950 are bags that got stuck in the system: most will have missed their connection, some actually got stuck on some conveyor, some had contents that required inspection and then there was no time to load them, some were bags left behind when the plane was full and yadda yadda yadda. The key here is the airline has information on their whereabouts, usually quite accurate. It just has varying degrees of success in sharing that info with its people and its customers, as well as getting that bag on its way to where it needs to be.

A bag in its journey through T5 gets scanned tens, sometimes hundreds, of times. So they're never 'lost'. A bag tracker, in this case, isn't really useful. We did some trials and, besides those that simply didn't work or reported the bag as being on the runway while it was on an arrivals belt in T5, even if it said "hey, the bag is in this corner of T5"... It wouldn't really say anything as there could be up to 5 levels of belt conveyors, trays and other machinery stacked one on top of another in that place. And I can simply access HAL's tools and see where the bag was scanned last, knowing that it'll be nearby.

A minuscule proportion (as I said, roughly between 100 and 50 bags per 1,000,000) are bags that simply disappear (their tag is ripped off and they have no recognisable traits, or they are nicked, or the bag courier leaves it on the kerb and so on). In this case, no one at the airline has the foggiest about the bag's whereabouts. This is the situation where a bag tracker would come handy but... will it still be charged? Will it be in range? Will it be accurate?

My understanding is this Tag works on BLE (bluetooth) - so when in range of the Phone (say 20 feet max) it tells the Phone where it is.

As soon as out of Bluetooth range - the software will say its separated and its last location was X.

Thats it.

Once a bag goes off into the Baggage system, the notification with trigger, and Airtags will not have any value to you.

The TAG is unable to tell you where it is - unless of course it comes into range again.

These devices are for items that dont move (car keys in your house for instance) - not luggage which is designed to be separated from you.

Maybe it's not the case with the Apple product, but I think that one tag that BA tried out (and I think even launched, Alex was fully behind that) had the ability of 'bouncing' its signal off other Bluetooth/radio beacons. It still had the same issues as I described in the post above, though, and its usefulness can be synthetised as being rather limited.

Ditto GPS.