Lufthansa now embraces AirTags, since it couldn't ban them

AppleInsider

Despite the airline previously banning AirTags for reasons understood only by itself, Lufthansa has now support for them in its app and is celebrating the integration.

AirTag on a bag.

Officially, AirTags were somehow dangerous and somehow in contravention of some laws somewhere, said Lufthansa in 2022 as it tried to find any excuse to ban them. This was not in any way a response to how all airlines were being caught out with luggage going missing or, say, baggage handlers stealing from passengers.

Lufthansa's ban lasted a whole three days before the airline said enough already, AirTags are fine. This was less from some technical testing and less from some actual reading of FCC regulations, though the airline tried to safe face by rustling up someone to say the words "risk assessment."

The German Aviation Authorities (Luftfahrtbundesamt) confirmed today, that they share our risk assessment, that tracking devices with very low battery and transmission power in checked luggage do not pose a safety risk. With that these devices are allowed on Lufthansa flights.

-- Lufthansa News (@lufthansaNews)

October 12, 2022

In truth, it was clearly that airline passengers had objected, and that airline passengers were inevitably going to ignore Lufthansa's ban. It may also have even affected passenger numbers, since it's not a great advert telling customers you don't want them to know how often their luggage gets lost.

All change

If you can't stop something, your best option is to embrace it. Maybe you can't ever smother the use of AirTags, but you can advertise to passengers that you're finally confident of not losing their baggage.

And you can try to make it sound as if this is something Lufthansa has done instead of Apple. So the airline's Oliver Schmitt can boast how passengers can now seamlessly track their baggage, "quickly and easily in the event of irregularities."

There's no question -- it does take work to integrate Apple's Find My into an app. There is a question over just how many people it takes to do it.

"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," said Lufthansa's Dieter Vranckx in the same statement.

The new and somehow revolutionary acceptance of AirTags is now available across Lufthansa aircraft as well as sister airlines, SWISS, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Eurowings.

Hopefully this will help end tales such as the one of a Canadian couple on vacation in 2022. They reported that because of AirTags, they could see how their baggage got a better tour of Portugal than they did.



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amar99

The airline tried to "safe face"?

sconosciuto

amar99 said:

The airline tried to "safe face"?

They were just towing the line for all intensive purposes.

sconosciuto

“Safe face” = didn’t vote for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party

sconosciuto

Airtags managed to do what decades of passenger complaints about airline baggage handling incompetence and flat-out theft that was just considered a cost of doing business couldn’t do: force airlines to up their baggage handling game and stop BEAZENLY LYING to customers about their bags.

tiredskills

I'm not sure why airlines erring on the side of caution when it comes to safety needs to be treated with such snark and suspicion.

caskey

tiredskills said:

I'm not sure why airlines erring on the side of caution when it comes to safety needs to be treated with such snark and suspicion.

It was treated snarkily because AirTags had been out for 1.5 years already and were not a proven danger. They justified the ban with reasons that were false, citing laws and regulations that absolutely didn't apply to the devices. The ban also came out shortly after some very embarrassing screw ups with customers baggage by Lufthansa had recently been pointed out in the press. The ban was not based on safety, it was there to try and change a narrative about how they provide customer service and it backfired immediately because people could see directly through the BS.

phaseangle

Now the problem is I need to put them in water proof holders because it seems the bagage handlers everywhere are getting too lazy to cover peoples luggage when it rains

suntanironman

phaseangle said:

Now the problem is I need to put them in water proof holders because it seems the bagage handlers everywhere are getting too lazy to cover peoples luggage when it rains

If an airline doesn’t hire enough handlers AND doesn’t give the handlers it does hire enough time to load and unload plane with great care… it’s nothing to do with being lazy.

edited February 6

y2an

If you have ever read the regulations on hazardous materials in aircraft baggage, you will get a better sense of why an airline could have had an issue with this. And regulations written in German are far less forgiving and open to interpretation than similar regulations in English.