Amber Neely
One man used his Apple AirTags to track his missing luggage and make a compelling argument for the airline that lost it to get involved.
Elliot Sharod traveled to South Africa for his wedding in April. However, when he arrived back in Dublin, the starting point of his trip, his bags had mysteriously vanished.
The three missing bags contained sentimental objects from his wedding — handwritten notes from guests, wedding invitations, itineraries. However, they also each had another item — an AirTag.
The Apple-designed item tracker is small enough to hide nearly anywhere. Sharod hid his in a sock.
Sharod has been actively tracking his bags during his trip home, noting that he had a "robust" itinerary that took the couple through multiple airports.
The bags never made it to Dublin. Instead, they wound up in Frankfurt, Germany, where they were transferred to a gate area.
Sharod reached out to the airline, Aer Lingus, to inform them that the bags were missing. Aer Lingus responded, saying they would route the bags from Frankfurt to London to deliver them to the Sharods' home in Surrey.
Eventually, two of the bags did show up, but a third is still missing. Sharod notes that the bag was delivered to a location in London, then moved three streets to a different location days later.
After failed attempts to locate the bag by the Aer Lingus, Sharod has taken to posting updates on his Twitter about the experience.
He called the airline's response to the situation appalling and made a PowerPoint presentation highlighting the locations where the bag had been tracked.
Hi @AerLingus - perhaps a PowerPoint presentation on the journey you've sent my lost/stolen bag on will help?
— AirTag Adventurer (@aviosAdventurer) April 22, 2022
I've told you multiple times where it is and you're doing nothing about it.
This has been a shocking experience with you pic.twitter.com/105BdEM7MU
After CNN picked up the story, Sharod received his missing bag on the evening of April 22.
We have the bag!
— AirTag Adventurer (@aviosAdventurer) April 22, 2022
Goodnight all
Apple introduced the long-awaited AirTag at the "Spring Loaded" event in April 2021. The new devices are meant to aid users in tracking objects that otherwise have no smart features, like backpacks and keys. They utilize the Ultra-Wideband chip in the latest iPhones to find lost devices with precision accuracy.
AirTags costs $39 for a single device. A pack of four is available for $99. Customers can engrave their AirTag with four text characters or select from a handful of emojis.
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20 Comments
In which country do they cost $39 each, Canada? In the US they're $29 each or $99 for a 4-pack.
I do exactly this with my bags. On a recent trip to Honduras, one of my pieces of luggage never made it to baggage claim and I had to make a connecting flight to go overseas. Thanks to my AirTag, I was able to quickly find my luggage elsewhere in the airport. Apparently it was on a different flight for whatever reason. My friends traveling with me have never seen/heard of AirTags and were astonished with how easily I found my luggage.
I'm not entirely sure that it should be legal for someone to track other people like this and then post the tracking data online, especially when the person being tracked may be guilty of nothing. I'm fairly good at geo-locating places/people and I think there's a better than even chance I could find the name of the person who was handed the bag using this data. But I wouldn't want to post the name of a potentially innocent person on the Internet, because it just doesn't seem right.