Lufthansa Group Airlines Add Apple AirTag Location Feature For Baggage Handling

Lufthansa Group airlines are introducing a new service for their passengers with immediate effect. Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Eurowings are integrating the Apple AirTag location feature into their baggage tracing.

Customers can now use the new function to privately and securely share the location of their AirTag or Find My network accessory via the familiar digital channels of the baggage tracing service. The group’s airlines integrate this information into their systems accordingly and can thus digitally support baggage tracking.

“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,” says Dieter Vranckx, Member of the Executive Board and Chief Commercial Officer of the Lufthansa Group. “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 thanks to innovative digital services.”

“Thanks to our app and website, passengers can now find solutions quickly and easily in the event of irregularities,” adds Oliver Schmitt, Head of the Lufthansa Group Digital Hangar. “In particular, we have been able to achieve significant improvements in the last few months in the area of baggage tracing. The integration of our customers’ AirTag data opens up additional possibilities for us to act even more efficiently and quickly.”

That sounds all nice and well as long as there is a sufficient amount of staff available to go after individual bags. Airports such as Frankfurt are huge and especially during peak times or massive cancellations there can be thousands of stranded bags.

We have reported our very own baggage-related mishaps over the years and it’s not pretty to deal with them, although the bags usually show up after a couple of days but going shopping and having to go through the reimbursement process is a huge waste of time.

Here is John’s case where the AirTag actually helped but only after contacting the SWISSPORT management at Tokyo-Haneda directly to kick up some dirt:

Air France Paris – Haneda Luggage Delays + Swissport Japan Issues

Swissport had no idea where the bags were, but the AirTag was actually able to trace them to a storage room near the Air France gate in Tokyo-Haneda. After the staff finally found them, thanks to some screenshots, the baggage was eventually recovered and forwarded to John’s next destination in Bangkok.

Conclusion

Lufthansa Group has implemented a new feature into the customer profile for baggage tracing which will in turn allow both the airline as well as the passenger the option to follow and retrieve baggage more expediently.

I’d expect more airlines to integrate this technology in the years to come. I’m actually surprised Lufthansa is the first to offer it, as they aren’t exactly known for great IT solutions.

I don’t have a Lufthansa Group flight until late April, but I’ll definitely have a look at this, and maybe I even have the “luck” to lose one of my bags when flying from Barcelona to Frankfurt. Then I can test this service right away!