Interestingly, they're not an issue in carry on bags. Which sit about 3 feet higher than a checked bag inside of an airplane.
Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage
151–160 of 629 posts
Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage
#152Note that the reason for airport mode is a courtesy to cell-phone carriers. It's not any air safety issue. Rather, 300-500 cell phones all trying to contact the next cell tower, multiple times per minute, would wreak havoc on cell service. https://www.inverse.com/article/51015-cell-phone-use-on-airp... At one point, when both cell phones and laptops were new, there was perhaps a risk to the airplane's electronics. Mo…
> Note that the reason for airport mode is a courtesy to cell-phone carriers. This doesn’t track. What about trains?
You're supposed to put your phone on airplane mode in a train or subway too, but most people don't:
https://pocketnow.com/airplane-mode/
The problem is significantly lessened for trains vs. planes though because you're traveling an order of magnitude slower and hence you switch cells an order of magnitude less frequently. Also many commuter rails run alongside major highways or boulevards, where the cell systems are built assuming lots of cell handoffs at roughly highway speeds. If enough people used high-speed rail to overwhelm the cell system we'd probably see announcements to put phones in airplane mode there too, but very few folks will travel long distances at high speeds on a train.
Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage
#153The cat is out of the bag. There is no way that people are going to stop putting AirTags in their luggage, at least not while airlines are still constantly losing luggage and fighting people on reimbursement.
I get that it's inconvenient and could be used nefariously. I'm not sure what kinds of worker protections airline staff have in Europe, but I can see why it might be problematic that I'm tracking the employee as they drive their van full of lost luggage to my hotel. Still, it's my stuff, so I'm going to keep putting AirTags in every bag I travel with. I'm sorry, but.. what are they going to do? Ban me from the airlin…
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Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage
#154"AirTags leak your private data, thus they must be disabled to preserve your privacy."
Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage
#155The cat is out of the bag. There is no way that people are going to stop putting AirTags in their luggage, at least not while airlines are still constantly losing luggage and fighting people on reimbursement.
> at least not while airlines are still constantly losing luggage Does that actually happen to people still? I thought it was just a 90s meme. I get a push notification every time they move my bag anywhere. 'Accepted into the system', 'loaded onto the plane', 'unloaded off the plane', 'popped out at the carousel'. Seems pretty bullet proof these days.
It still happens. In a lot of cases they find it and go through some efforts to deliver the luggage to where you’re staying.
Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get that it's inconvenient and could be used nefariously. I'm not sure what kinds of worker protections airline staff have in Europe, but I can see why it might be problematic that I'm tracking the employee as they drive their van full of lost luggage to my hotel. Still, it's my stuff, so I'm going to keep putting AirTags in every bag I travel with. I'm sorry, but.. what are they going to do? Ban me from the airlin…
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Why do you think I think I'm special? I simply think we're all humans, with basic rights, such as being able to keep tabs on our personal property, within reason-- which, surely, a small, light, unobtrusive tracker that has no known problematic failure modes, and which contains a battery that is within the checked baggage limits comports with?
I made no suggestion that I should be able to shirk the rules while everyone else deserves to get caught.
You're welcome to point and laugh at me if Lufthansa bans me and I have to stop putting AirTags in my bags so as not to be banned by other airlines, should they choose to adopt such an anti-consumer stance as well.
I have no real issue with taking a calculated risk, the kinds of calculated risks we take all day every day. Surely you don't carefully read the terms of carriage on every airline ticket you purchase. I know I don't. I trust that the market will more or less treat us reasonably, and if one vendor does not, I can find another which does.
Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage
#157Note that the reason for airport mode is a courtesy to cell-phone carriers. It's not any air safety issue. Rather, 300-500 cell phones all trying to contact the next cell tower, multiple times per minute, would wreak havoc on cell service. https://www.inverse.com/article/51015-cell-phone-use-on-airp... At one point, when both cell phones and laptops were new, there was perhaps a risk to the airplane's electronics. Mo…
> Note that the reason for airport mode is a courtesy to cell-phone carriers. This doesn’t track. What about trains?
Cell phone cells are (ideally) shaped to account for the expected pattern of how handover will occur. Along roads and train lines, the cells are (at least in GSM) supposed to be tailored to allow for easy routing and handover as the devices travels in the direction of the way.
While I have never read anything concretely analyzing the handover pattern of devices on airplanes, I would expect that since a very large number of cells are almost equally visible/equal signal strength, the network would have to frequently handover the device from one cell to another.
The handover process is, for voice traffic, very resource intense. (in GSM) it involves duplication of traffic to the neighboring cell and a lot of coordination.
I think that could be the reason for why mobile operators find airplane-borne devices annoying.
Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage
#158“ Lufthansa claims that the transmission function needs to be turned off during flight when in checked luggage, just as is required for cell phones, laptops, etc.” On my phone, turning on airplane mode seems to disable the cell and wifi radios (with wifi able to be toggled back on) but Bluetooth defaults to staying on.
Yeah that is... a non argument by Lufthansa -- i will be polite. (Resources: Here is for FAA, EU ruling is similar: https://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/ped/ — check the FAQ also.)
They technically can -— the best kind of can I guess —- but it is not in the spirit of course of ILS interference (@108-112 MHz) with Bluetooth at 2.45 GHz and extremely low range. Hell the pilot is likely to have their iPad with Bluetooth on during all plane operations.
FAA expects to be communicating with mature individuals and entities and not this in their guidelines.
With the same thinking they can ban pacemakers and all cordless headphones, and …breathing. Good luck to Lufthansa. They just declared their baggage handling sucks.
Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage
#159> it just can’t transmit, which of course renders it useless Because, what, it's impossible to program things like this to start transmitting after an N-hour radio silence?
That’s the fix from Apple’s side — setting a flight mode that only activates after a set time period, altitude changes indicating landing, or some other beacon saying you’ve landed. So long as the Bluetooth radio doesn’t transmit, it should be fine from an FAA/EU equivalent point of view.
Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage
#160For all the people commenting "How would they know?", AirTags are scannable by NFC readers and identify themselves as an AirTag. You can test this yourself by downloading the NFC Tools app on your iPhone (or one for Android) and doing a read on the AirTag. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nfc-tools/id1252962749
> "How would they know?"
They don't have to know.
All they want to do is respond to "You lost my bag" with "But you jeopardized the entire flight with your illegal transmitter".