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Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage

onemileatatime.com

361–370 of 629 posts

Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

Millions of people travel long distances on trains: 353 million/year on the Shinkansen network, 1.5+ billion/year on China high-speed rail, 110 million on France's TGV. These passengers use their phone without overloading the cell networks.

Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage

#362
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s actually illegal for them to do this without refunding you in Europe but a lot of airlines just ignore the law on this it seems.

This was the US. EU passenger rights are so awesome.

These rights hardly work, at keast Lufthansa doesnt care and good luck going to courts for your rights. Not worth the paper these laws are written on.

Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage

#363
post #276

Knowing German I read through the sources. This article is pretty misleading. The [primary source]( https://www.watson.de/leben/urlaub%20&%20freizeit/879935671-... ) is a slightly clickbait article asking the questions: "Are AirTags allowed in checked luggage?". They reached out to Lufthanse asking them. They responded: "Luggage trackers are electronic devices so they have to be turned off when the luggage is checked…

If Lufthansa doesn't understand the simple meaning of an electronic device it's all the more power for them to get destroyed with this messaging.

Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage

#364

Just wait until AirTags have accelerometers in them too (capturing all the abuse to bags)! Seriously though, I'll be surprised if Apple puts any serious resources into future versions of the AirTag, given the amount of bad PR[0] they've generated for Apple, and how allergic Apple is to bad PR. From the perspective of Apple, the cost to benefit ratio doesn't seem to be there, especially for a product that is a roundin…

> given the amount of bad PR[0] they've generated for Apple.

I feel like this is a case of "There is no such thing as bad publicity".

When I read any of that PR, I just see that these are good at what they do at a reasonably low price.

Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage

#365
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and it might well be that you don’t have the receipts anymore. That seems pretty unlikely; the receipts now go to your email where you'd have to delete them intentionally.

Receipts for the personal items that the airline lost, not for the airfare. You need to prove how much your damages are in order to make a claim.

Your damages are what you had to spend on all the new items you had to buy for your trip, to replace the items they failed to deliver. You buy new clothes (etc), keep the receipts, and turn those in for reimbursement. At least this is how it worked a decade ago when my luggage was "lost" for a US domestic flight.

In my case, I think they deliberately bumped my bag for paying cargo, because they saw my billing address was near the destination airport and assumed I would be fine "at home". They didn't know I was going to a wedding, and that said wedding was several hours drive away, so delivering my bag a day late to the destination airport wouldn't end the problem. They still paid out though.

Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage

#366

The 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.

Antidotally my personal delayed luggage rate is about 15% (~100 segments a year, checking bags on about 1/5th of those)

Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage

#367

Just wait until AirTags have accelerometers in them too (capturing all the abuse to bags)! Seriously though, I'll be surprised if Apple puts any serious resources into future versions of the AirTag, given the amount of bad PR[0] they've generated for Apple, and how allergic Apple is to bad PR. From the perspective of Apple, the cost to benefit ratio doesn't seem to be there, especially for a product that is a roundin…

Are you kidding? There’s a massive compounding ecosystem value in AirTags.

Anecdotally, I don’t know anyone — friend or family — that doesn’t make use of them.

As for the bad press? Faith in the press is at an all-time low, activist woke-scolds don’t remotely represent the average consumer, and I don’t think anyone is taking the muckrakers seriously.

Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage

#369
post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My most frequent use of the air plane mode, is when I go underground on metro systems, which I find pretty ironic. (Without Airplane Mode, the phone will keep trying to connect to cellular towers, which just makes the network experience unstable) Perhaps "Underground Mode" would be more suitable in a modern context /s

Isn't an unstable network experience better than no network experience?

In my experience, no not at all, as it causes my phone to drain its battery exceptionally fast while it thrashes the modem in a frantic search for signal.

Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage

#370

Note 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…

The term airplane mode will persist as an anachronism forever. Some day we will have to explain to our grandchildren why disabling networks has anything to do with airplanes.

My iPad is forever in airplane mode. That way I can turn wifi off without iOS automatically turning it back on 24 hours later.
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