Another possibility--pick up a used iPhone and link through your Android. I would think it would work. You need 11 or higher to get the best accuracy.

I don't know. I think a beacon would be simpler. You don't include the cell tech.... You can reduce the system requirements... Run something headless... They already have a prototype to base this on.... Apple or someone has in the past used Bluetooth beacons to promote specific products in a retail environment... It'd be cheaper and easier to propagate...

I've traveled a lot and our luggage always arrived, although sometimes 2 or 3 days later.
The latest news items, along with our upcoming flight with a transfer in LHR, are making me a little nervous though.
I'm an Android user so AirTags are of no use to me. In this post the only alternative discussed is Tile. Is nobody using other devices, there seem to be plenty of them when I search on Google. Some of them also specifically aimed at luggage.

I just wonder if a device lacking a GPS can properly indicate your bag's location if it's lost in a hall filled to the brim with suitcases. I'm not sure if a Tile user will get close enough to my lost bag if it never makes it to a luggage belt but instead gets lost in the basement at LHR.

Luggage trackers with GPS are bigger, more expansive, requires monthly sub to a mobile service, with low battery life and is NOT going to work in a basement at LHR. GPS tracker requires reading signals from at least 3 to 4 satellites in the sky. Basement is actually where airtag would work and GPS tracker won't. You just need 1 worker with an iPhone to go into the basement. Even if his iPhone doesn't get any mobile signal, wifi, or GPS inside the basement, his phone would pick up the airtag bluetooth. When he got out to somewhere with signal, it will transmit out and you will get the general location.

But yeah, Tile is probably not going to work well in a basement either as you need that one person with Tile app installed to go near it. But that's the ultimate trump card with Airtag. That it has millions and millions of beacons all over the world. The previous few posts were talking about manufacturers setting up beacons at airports, but Apple has done it with the entire world for free using their customers' mobile data, battery and devices.

I understand, sounds great, but getting an iPhone just for this is a bit over the top...

As my girlfriend works her way back home, I'm still finding adequate location information with Tile and its app. Not only has the Tile with her computer bag been located at each airport she's flown through, including her current location at DFW, but it's been located several times at other locations, including her hotel Wednesday and on the road from Barstow to Ontario yesterday.

I'll give it one final test this afternoon when I pick her up at the airport. The app is supposed to give off increased signals as the bag gets closer, a nice feature if you're waiting for checked luggage. So far, everything has worked as well as I expected, and I'll definitely use it next month when I go to Scotland. I hope I don't have lost luggage, but it's nice to see that Tile provides me with a tool to help me find it.

Tile’s proximity circles are useful to find out how close a bag is, but they lack in directional info unless: a) the tracking device (or perhaps the tracked device) moves in such a way as to try to figure out the direction; and/or b) the sound trigger works to locate the direction of the Tile.

When the proximity indicator circles indicate the Tile is in range of the Bluetooth receiver, then it should also be able to be triggered for an audio ring even if the distance is nearly at its limits.

Briefly borrowing an iPhone/iPad/Mac to set up an AppleID and AirTag would allow for some tracking of an AirTag with a non-Apple device.

Is that true? I know I could use my android phone's browser, put it in desktop mode, login to icloud.com and find my wife and kid's iPhones and iPads. But I read that you can't do the same with Airtag. I think Airtag does not show up on icloud.com.

Apple has kept AirTag locating disabled for iCloud.com. My bad.

It depends on how you look at it. I generally travel with 2-3 phones (my personal, my work and my "away" phone if I have one). If I have am in Asia (for example), I'd have all three, the third could be anything (iphone SE?)... not cheap, but if I can give it multi-functional useage, even better.

Final report. My girlfriend landed, but the Tile app did not pick up her location until just before I saw her appear around a corner. All the app did at that point was flash "Connecting" on the screen but as she got closer, the app reported the bag's location as the street address for the airport. This experience meshes with Tile's official spec that it works at a radius of 400 feet so I remain satisfied with the results of my test.

Now, I'm hoping I won't need Tile's help next month to find my bag, but I believe I have enough confidence in the way it works that I can hope for some assistance should my airline lose my golf bag.

On second thought, would the GPS trackers not pick up satellite signals when the bags are unloaded. They will indeed be useless in the basement but wouldn't you be able to see in some kind of log that their last location was at LHR?

I will maybe try to find a cheap second-hand iPhone. Is AirTag something that works with all iPhones or do you need a recent model?

The iPhone can be an older model such as a 1st gen iPhone SE (March 2016 release) or iPhone 6S (Sept 2015) running iOS 14.5. To use the precise location, the iPhone requires U1 chip which is in the iPhone 11 and newer except for the 2nd gen iPhone SE (no U1 chip).

Maybe I missed it in all the Tile discussion or discussion of buying an iphone just to use for this purpose - but no one has brought up the Galaxy SmartTag+? I dumped my Tiles after several issues and went with this last year.

Used these for the last several trips and they could not be easier to use. Integrates easily into their app. Very simple to us. Already has saved me once after arrival when a bag of our scuba gear did not come out. Tracker showed it was all the way at the other end of the arrival area, walked down there, rang the tag - boom. Not sure how long it would have been for us to get a bag like that out of a huge pile of unclaimed bags.

Anyway - I thought the OP was looking for something Android specific so I have nothing more to add other than they work.

I had a Trakdot GPS device in 2014. Unfortunately the hardware was a pile of steaming garbage. It wouldn't work half the time and had limited battery life. Theoretically if the GPS isn't working there could at least be some course location from the cell phone signal picked up - but I don't think I ever got it to work for more than two trips in a row so I threw it away.