AirTag’s newest feature could work even better now for many travelers

One of the most common AirTag use cases is for tracking luggage, and Apple shipped a great feature in the last year that helps airlines recover lost luggage faster. Now, per a report at travel publication Skift, that feature has just gotten a key upgrade.

Apple has improved how lost AirTag location gets to airlines, starting with Delta

If you use an AirTag for tracking luggage, you can now privately, temporarily share an AirTag’s location with select airlines to help that airline’s staff find the lost bag fast. Airline support has been rolling out all year.

And now, it seems, Apple has been working behind the scenes to make the feature even more effective.

Adriana Lee writes at Skift:

Apple has expanded its role in travel with a new integration tool developed with Delta Air Lines, enabling AirTag location data to flow straight into Delta’s baggage systems. 

Completed within the past few weeks, the API builds on Share Item Location, a feature released last year to help airlines find lost AirTagged luggage. 

The new tech allows detailed location data to flow directly into the airlines’ back-end, reducing the number of manual steps previously required by workers. 

The report explains that Apple’s newly developed API doesn’t seek to replace existing airline baggage systems, but rather it integrates with them.

As part of the testing, Delta’s Ramsey Hammad says that Apple was taken behind the scenes over several occasions at “some of the world’s busiest airports.”

The tool was developed in partnership with Delta, but it is not exclusive to that airline, and as such we should expect to see other major airlines roll out support in the future.

How AirTag’s location sharing feature works for luggage

Just like before, a user needs to explicitly share an AirTag’s location before the airline will see it. There’s no change on that front. But now, once that happens, the location data will flow more seamlessly into the right systems to hopefully make baggage recovery quicker and more dependable than before.

So if you’re traveling with Delta over the holidays, and lose your bag, you can go through the process of sharing your AirTag location with the airline.

Here are the step-by-step instructions:

1. Open the Find My app on iPhone, iPad, or Mac
2. Go to the Items tab
3. Select the AirTag or other lost item
4. Scroll down until you see ‘Share Item Location’
5. Follow the prompts to activate sharing
6. Share the provided URL with your airline

Hopefully if this happens to you, Delta will surprise you with how quickly they’re able to get your bag back.

Have you used AirTag’s new ‘Share Item Location’ feature yet? How did it work for you? Let us know in the comments.

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