Summary Lufthansa lost my bags due to airport chaos earlier in the day. The AirTag helped me realize the bag was at the airport but delivered to the wrong terminal. In this instance, the AirTag was crucial for finding my lost baggage.
Back in late 2022, Lufthansa briefly banned Apple’s AirTags from checked baggage . Thankfully, the ban was short-lived. Recently, amidst post-protest chaos at Frankfurt Airport, the German flag carrier Lufthansa lost my bag after a late arrival from London Heathrow.
Here’s how I got it back. Last month, I flew from London Heathrow Airport to Frankfurt Airport after the 2024 Farnborough International Airshow. Thanks to protesters gluing themselves airside in the morning , operations were in disarray.
Our flight arrived one hour and 17 minutes late at 23:22. Importantly, I knew that my bag had also made it to Frankfurt thanks to checking the “Find My” app from Apple. What happened next was a surprise.
London bags started to be offloaded onto the belt, and I thought it was strange that the “priority’ tagged bags were not first on the belt. My bag went to the wrong terminal When I looked at the FindMy app, I saw that my bag had somehow gone to Terminal 2 instead of Terminal 1, where I had arrived. It seemed as though I was not the only one, as all the bags within that particular container had somehow gone to the wrong terminal.
We continued to wait in the hope that the bags would show up on the belt, but eventually, around 90 minutes after arriving, an airport worker came to tell us there would be no more bags that night. I resigned myself from seeing my bag and booked an Uber home. In Uber, I reported that my bag was missing through Lufthansa’s online tool .
I then marked my AirTag as lost in the FindMy app, per instructions from Lufthansa. Turning detective with FindMy from Apple Lufthansa’s online missing baggage tool allows you to request to pick up the bag from the airport or have it delivered to your home. I initially selected the home delivery option.
However, it became clear that the bag would not be delivered before my next trip the next day. Thanks to my AirTag, I could see that my bag had moved to the Terminal 1 baggage hall the next morning. It spent the whole day here, with the location regularly updating due to the number of travelers passing.
The Lufthansa website says not to go to the airport unless you have been instructed by the baggage tracking tool. Despite this, I decided to take my chances and went to the airport, a roughly two-hour round journey on the train. The bag search turns physical I followed the signs to the lost luggage desk and was buzzed through to the baggage reclaim area.
I then went to the desk and queued before explaining that I could see my bag was somewhere there on FindMy. Now, at this point, I completely expected to be told to go away, but something unexpected happened next. Instead, I searched through rows of misplaced baggage using the precision finding feature until my phone picked up my bag.
I then searched the adjacent shelf and quickly found it. (Generic Apple press images are shown below as I didn't think to screenshot while searching for the bag). The Lufthansa employee checked the baggage tag against the check-in receipt I had brought and then marked the bag as found in the baggage system.
It’s worth repeating that without an AirTag in my bag, I would have had no clue that my bag had even made it to Frankfurt Airport, let alone that it could be picked up in the arrivals hall. For this reason alone, I will never travel without an AirTag in my baggage again. More and more travelers are placing tracking devices into their baggage following negative press about lost and delayed luggage over the past few years.
Personally, I always travel with an AirTag in all of my bags. On my most recent trip to Frankfurt, having my AirTag meant that I knew it was in Frankfurt and was able to collect it when Lufthansa hadn’t even located it. I’ll write a story to go into more depth soon.
.. In the meantime we want to know what you think about passengers travelling with AirTags and equivalent trackers.
Let us know your thoughts below! (Photo: ErickPHOTOPRO | Shutterstock.com).
