Lufthansa Group & Virgin Atlantic enable Apple’s location feature for AirTag

More airlines around the world are teaming up with Apple to help travellers locate and recover misplaced luggage.

Lufthansa Group Airlines, inclusive of Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Eurowings, have now integrated the Apple AirTag location feature into their baggage tracing.

Now, customers can use the function to privately and securely share the location of their AirTag or Find My network accessory via channels for baggage tracing.

The group's airlines integrate this information into their systems accordingly and can now digitally support baggage tracking.

READ MORE: Apple & Air Canada team up to help travellers find lost luggage

“Our digital products team, the ‘Digital Hangar’ with its approximately 1,000 experts, offers our customers new digital services, transparent information and support along the entire journey every month,” said Dieter Vranckx, Member of the Executive Board and Chief Commercial Officer of the Lufthansa Group, in a statement. “The use of Apple AirTag data is one example of many ways in which we are continuously developing the customer journey of all our Group airlines due to innovative digital services.”

Virgin Atlantic has also announced new feature, allowing the airline to locate delayed bags and reunite them with customers more quickly.

“We’re always looking for innovative solutions to ensure our customers enjoy the best possible experience with Virgin Atlantic,” said Corneel Koster, chief customer and operating officer at Virgin Atlantic, in a statement.

“We know many people already use AirTags or a Find My network accessory to keep updated on the location of their luggage. On the rare occasion, when operational issues or misconnecting flights may require bags to be located, our teams now have this shared source of information, so our customers have peace of mind on our progress. Virgin Atlantic has amongst the best baggage performance in the industry and welcomes this innovation from Apple.”

To share the location of their AirTag or Find My network accessory with the airline, customers can first generate a Share Item Location link in the Find My app on their iPhone, iPad or Mac.

When customers make their missing bag report they can then share the link with the airport and baggage tracing teams who can view the live location of the bag and use it to reunite customers with their luggage.

For privacy and security, location sharing will automatically end as soon as a customer receives their bag, can be stopped by the customer at any time and will automatically expire after seven days.

Share Item Location is built on the Apple Find My network, a crowdsourced network of over one billion Apple devices that use Bluetooth wireless technology to detect missing devices or items nearby and report their approximate location back to the owner.

The entire process is end-to-end encrypted and anonymous, so no one else can view an item’s location or information.

In Canada, Air Canada introduced the feature late last year.

The function is available in most regions worldwide as part of the public beta of iOS 18.2 and is available to all users as a free software update for iPhone Xs and later.

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