AirTag gets magical mystery tour of Portugal in lost luggage

AppleInsider

It's now become common for travelers to use AirTags to find their suitcases, but a vacationing couple got to watch as their lost luggage toured Portugal without them.

AirTags have helped recover mislaid suitcases, and even helped in the arrest of a baggage handler who was stealing luggage.

Now, however, the AirTag in one man's lost suitcase practically gave a holidaying couple a guide to the best places to see in Portugal. Through a video that has now been seen over 800,000 times, TikTok user @jennyantuness has shown the mysterious journey of her boyfriend Austin's baggage.

@jennyantuness when your luggage sees more of portugal than you #portugal #airtag #fyp #luggage original sound - NostalgiaACS

The video, called "When your luggage sees more of Portugal than you," ends happily with the boyfriend recovering his luggage in an airport store room.

But first the Canadian couple discovered that his case had been left behind at Toronto airport. It did then fly out to Portugal, but then embarked on a country-wide sightseeing tour.

The video shows that over five days, the bag and its AirTag arrived at Portugal's airport, then seemingly moving to a luggage warehouse. That's obviously inconvenient for the couple, but then the AirTag showed the bag moving to a beach.

After that, the luggage goes up the coast to near Leiria, then stops off in Lisbon. It's then subsequently tracked to someone's house, then a warehouse, then off toward the Sea of Straw, and finally flew back to Toronto airport.

Reportedly, nothing was missing from the suitcase when it was recovered. It was exactly as if the bag itself had decided it needed a five-day vacation.

Presumably other pieces of lost luggage have gone on tour like this, and we've just not known because we didn't have AirTags. Now, surely no one is going to trust their luggage to baggage handling without an Apple AirTag in there somewhere.

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robin huber

Brought back un-fond memories of the year before AirTags. In 2017 our luggage was lost on a flight from Lisbon to Madrid. When we got home to L.A. we spent weeks dealing with airlines, airports, insurance, and other entities. Eventually my wife’s bag was found in Toronto (what is it about Portugal and Toronto!?) and eventually got to LAX. My bag was never recovered. I was one of the first to order AirTags the day they became available and they are duct taped to an inside corner of our bags inside the lining for every trip. 

Who knew that the cost to replace every item would be $5000! Allstate homeowner’s policy covered our loss, but what we didn’t realize was that they raised our rates on ALL our policies, including auto, because of the loss. We totaled it up and found that they got their five grand back in three years of higher premiums, and at this point are making a clear profit out of the deal. My advice: eat the loss, or buy separate trip insurance that covers luggage loss. 

gadgetfreak-apple

robin huber said:

 My advice: eat the loss, or buy separate trip insurance that covers luggage loss. 

Or change insurance companies.  We use Farmer's and have had two large claims.  Our rates did not go up but our agent told us that a third large claim within the next few years would trigger something.  It has since been a few years and we no longer risk the trigger -- but it was our agent who stayed on top of this, made sure our rates were not raised, and give us insight/warning about when there would be risk of rate increases.

entropys

That story reminds me of a gag we pulled on my sister years ago. She went through a phases where she was decorating the front garden of her rental home with garden gnomes, the more kitsch the better. Her favourite was this blue dwarf.

anyway, one of my mates, who my sister didn’t know,  was going on a surfing trip up the coast for a few months.  The dwarf was stolen and holiday snaps were sent of him every few days from a different beach.  Then one day he turned up in his old spot.