Air Tags and Smart Tags in luggage?
 

Are Air Tags (Apple) and Smart Tags (Samsung) allowed in your checked luggage because I thought batteries needed to be in carry on luggage. Yet I hear lots of people saying they use them all the time in their checked luggage.

Secondly, how well do these work for checking where your luggage is or was last "seen".

Lufthansa: maybe, maybe not. Don't Ask Don't Tell.

Every other airline in das Welt: wirklich kein Problem mec.

P.S. they connect to nearby Apple devices that have a data connection, via Bluetooth, and the devices with data connections forward the tag location to a central server. Alas, Apple-being-Apple provides no location history (unless you're running a logging server, which I am).

If only there were an open source protocol for this ...

FAA says any battery less than .3 grams of lithium is okay in checked luggage.

Engadget article with the specifics

yes, allowed and yes they work. I do it all the time

I put an AirTag in my bag for my JFK - LHR - BER trip yesterday and it was a lifesaver. Rather than wait for my bag to arrive, I could see on landing that my bag was still in London and go straight to the lost baggage desk. I showed my AirTag tracking to the agent she and gave me a claim form without batting an eye.

It was very nice not to have to wait for my bag and then wait in line to make a claim after the long journey.

Airlines which have a complimentary in-flight Wi-Fi offering for at least some of its travelers may have more frequent AirTag location updates on average than airlines that don’t.

That said, I’ve seen AirTag locations register mid-ocean while on a bunch of airlines with in-air Wi-Fi connectivity .

For the TSA, here is the reference I used to determine if it was ok or not. https://www.faa.gov/hazmat/packsafe/..._batteries.pdf I was not able to find a more updated version so I am "assuming" that is up to date. Since the AirTag device uses a button style battery, appears ok on that front.

I have actually had very good experience with them in my luggage. During a recent lost luggage situation, I was able to watch it fly around the US. Also watched it sit in Phoenix and not move for 3 days......... It is pretty cool but you have to love Apple piggy backing peoples phone and not event knowing it.

It works the same way with the Samsung Smart Tag. I think I am going to try them for my next flight in Feb. Thanks everyone! If anyone has any stories about them please share!

Besides your ability to track luggage, there are several theft related arrests and property recovery.

This is not luggage related but my wife’s coworker recovered a stolen car which had an AirTag. This recovery was not published in a news story.

AirTag resulted in luggage theft charges for an airport employee.

I used Samsung smart tags on my trip to Australia in October. They proved to be very useful. On the JFK-FRA-SIN-CNS leg, SQ left behind one of my bags at JFK. At CNS, when SQ didn't have an answer, I could tell them exactly where my bag was, thanks to the smart tag.

No problem with using them on Lufthansa. Issue was resolved weeks ago.

https://9to5mac.com/2022/10/13/lufthansa-airtags/

Do the Samsung tags have anything like the reporting density offered by Apple? Other non-Apple tags (Tile) appear to take days to generate location due to lack of a developed ecosystem.

Also: only works with Galaxy phones. Okay; true fail; illegal bundling *and* not enough phones using the software to detect the devices.

That is a hard question to answer. All I can say is that, my Samsungs tags were spotted by many devices at every point of baggage transfer on my Australia trip.

I'd be very interested to know more about this! I've seen some stuff online, but there doesn't seem to be a consensus best way to do this.