Last Updated on December 26, 2024 by ETC Team
Apple is making it easier for passengers to track down lost luggage with its new item location sharing feature. This new feature from Apple, released in the iOS 18.2 update, is one that lets you share your Air Tag location with airlines. Starting this week, the U.S. airlines United, Delta, and Canadian airline Air Canada are rolling out support for tracking lost or delayed luggage.
The feature allows you to create a shareable link and temporarily share your Air Tag location with airlines and others, including employees at the participating airlines. For a temporary period, if you have an AirTag inside your bags, the airline will be able to see the location.
This can help you find them if they are lost or delayed. This feature, along with the little known flight tracker built into iOS, is another way Apple is making it easier to share valuable flight info with others.
Share Your Air Tag Location With Airlines
Previously Apple announced a list of airlines will support the feature “in the coming months,” including British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, KLM, Lufthansa, Qantas, Singapore Airlines, Air New Zealand, Austrian Airlines, Aer Lingus, Brussels Airlines, Eurowings, Iberia, SWISS, Turkish Airlines, and Vueling. More airlines are “coming soon.”will support the feature “in the coming months,” including British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, KLM, Lufthansa, Qantas, Singapore Airlines, Air New Zealand, Austrian Airlines, Aer Lingus, Brussels Airlines, Eurowings, Iberia, SWISS, Turkish Airlines, and Vueling. More airlines are “coming soon.”
However, be aware that Apple’s sharing service, as of yet, doesn’t provide a direct link to report missing luggage to the airlines. Instead, you’ll have to create a sharable link and contact your airline’s lost luggage team.
iPhone, iPad, and Mac users running iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2 can generate a “Share Item Location” link in the Find My app. Anyone they share the link with can then view a website with a location of the item on a map. The website will automatically update with the item’s latest known location.
Share Your Air Tag Location With Airlines
So what exactly are the steps to create the “Share Item Location” link? We’ll, it’s pretty simple.
Here’s how you share your Air Tag location with airlines:
- Open the “Find My” app.
- Select Items.
- Click on the Air Tag you’d links to share.
- Under “Lost Air Tag”, select “Share Item Location”.
- Follow the onscreen instructions and you will generate a link that you can copy and forward to the airline. You can also share this link with anyone else you’d like to temporarily give access to the location of the Air Tag.
Apple said it worked directly with airlines to put systems in place to “privately and securely” accept the “Share Item Location” links. Access to each link is “limited to a small number of people,” and recipients are required to “authenticate” to view the link through either their Apple Account or partner email address. The item’s location stops being shared “as soon as a user is reunited with their item,” or at any time the item’s owner decides. An item’s shared location automatically expires after seven days.
A post from Delta on X suggests that you will be able to do this via the Fly Delta app.
https://x.com/Delta/status/1868679206004990096
“This cutting-edge solution, developed by Apple and in partnership with Delta Air Lines, will enable us to locate items more efficiently and effectively,” said Erik Snell, Delta Air Lines’ senior vice president of Airport Customer Service, in a statement.
