The travel comeback in 2022 is in turbulence: canceled flights, creeping security checks and overloaded baggage carousels. So it would be useful to always know where your suitcase is. Caro Daur solves this with Airtags – but how effective is that?
In 2022, the travel industry will celebrate the post-pandemic resurrection. But after two years of passenger slack, business is anything but smooth. It doesn’t matter whether it’s luggage, an airplane or a passenger – there are almost endless waiting times for everything, and the processes often grind to a halt. The risk that a suitcase, for example, falls by the wayside is all the greater.
Influencer Caro Daur shared her solution to the problem on Instagram: on a trip to Lisbon, the 27-year-old showed a screenshot of her iPhone before and after the flight. On it you can see: Apple’s position sensor Airtag in her suitcase, which shows where the luggage is located. So Daur could be sure that the suitcase had arrived in the destination country with her.
Just rough location determination
And it works like this: If you want to know where an Airtag is, you can let other iPhones search for it. If the smartphones receive an Airtag signal, they report it anonymously to the owner and a map shows where the Apple chip was last discovered.
With the help of other iPhones, at least one question can be answered – namely whether the suitcase was on the right plane or is wandering around the world somewhere. But nothing more. Because the location of the air tags by third parties is not precise enough, for example, to find the suitcase in a completely overcrowded airport hall if it is still making its rounds on a conveyor belt – at least so far.
Air tags are not intended for live tracking of moving objects – they work too imprecisely for that. At least they tell you whether, for example, a suitcase is actually in the right terminal, is perhaps still on the plane or is lying around somewhere else.
If you know that your own Airtag has to be nearby, you can use the “Where is?” app. but actually looking for it. From the iPhone 11 it is possible to actively locate an Airtag. Then, if you are close enough, you get an arrow on the display that shows the direction – the small chip can also distinguish between floors. If it’s quiet enough, sounds can also be played to shorten the search. It’s very simple: Open the app, navigate to “Objects”, select the Airtag and press “Search”.
Air tags in the suitcase are allowed
The use of the cheap air tags for this purpose is completely harmless, so it only has advantages. Since Apple does not install a rechargeable battery in an Airtag, the tracker can be carried in checked baggage and does not have to be switched off before the flight – the transmission power of the Bluetooth technology is too low to disrupt the aircraft.
A small downer: An Airtag only reports when other iPhones have captured the chip or you are in the vicinity yourself. So if you land at an airport where nobody in the terminal has an iPhone, or if your luggage falls into the ocean en route, you won’t know where the suitcase is.
