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Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage

onemileatatime.com

581–590 of 629 posts

Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage

#581

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.

I’ve got a friend who is doing a lot of travel to Russia due to her father having some medical problems, so I bought her an AirTag for her luggage.

On her first flight home, she missed her flight, but her luggage “made it.” She was able to track the bag all the way to the American West Coast, and apparently the workers at the airport even found it helpful in the “last mile” of retrieving the bag.

On her second flight, Lufthansa lost the bag on a flight to Helsinki. They were apparently huge dcks about it, but again she was able to accurately track and eventually retrieve it.

AirTags are one of those devices that really surpass their advertised usefulness. I’m encouraging everyone I know who travels to get some.

I do wonder about the workers who must be getting those automated “yo a tracker is following you” anti-stalking messages on their iPhones, though.

Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage

#582
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What in the world are you talking about? It's perfectly legal. In fact, you're technically not even allowed to skip the second leg of your ticket. Lufthansa has sued people for doing this as well: https://pointmetotheplane.boardingarea.com/lufthansa-sues-th... That one is a little more questionable but it is still indeed against the fare rules to intend to not fly all of the segments. There is, however, an exception…

Lufthansa and other airlines have also been sued for this practice and lost. I guess it depends on the case but it seems ridiculous, if I leave my starter at a restaurant they then refuse to deliver dessert and yet charge me for it! Clearly that is bonkers and illegal and the exact same thing. Read the 2015 EU consumer rights act for details…

Can you offer any citation on losing cases for the practice (other than specifically in Italy, which I'll explicitly note is surprising)?

Also what is the "2015 eu consumer rights act"? The closest thing I can find is "The Consumer Rights Act 2015," which "is an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom." It is neither EU-wide nor does it seem to have anything about airline tickets.

Typically when people talk about EU air regulation they are talking about "EU regulation 261/2004" which also has nothing to do with what you're talking about.

You seem to just be spouting nonsense here. Finally, in the restaurant case, you do not agree to a discounted set course in exchange for finishing all of the portions of the meal. If you want the flexibility, PAY FOR IT. This is like entering a "if you finish this meal within 30 minutes, it's free" restaurant promotion, not finishing the meal, and refusing to pay. Note restaurant promotions of this type are also not "clearly illegal."

The airlines allow you to pay for the flexibility you want. You're just refusing to do so and somehow thinking you're in the right.

Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage

#583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they used to come scream at you if you were reading a Kindle during takeoff, so that part has relaxed at least So far as I know you're supposed to put your phone into airplane mode to turn the cellular radio off, but they don't seem to care if you use bluetooth any more

The reason for that one I've heard from pilot friends is just that they want you upright and alert during takeoff and landing. I've been told to stop reading a book during a landing once. But imagine most of the flight crew don't want to deal with the potential fights from telling someone to put away a non-cellular device.

I'm usually playing games, reading or watching videos during takeoff and landing. Nobody has ever told me not to. Why would I need to be alert? Do they think I'm not going to notice if the plane suddenly starts falling off the sky?

Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage

#584
post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Since AirTags use standard CR2032 batteries, that means you could swap in an alkaline-based battery and avoid that regulation.

Where do you get that from? The citation says: lithium metal OR lithium ion cells OR batteries

It's read as

(Lithium metal or lithium ion) (cells or batteries)

Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage

#585
post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised that anyone who believe that any passenger could mess with airplane communications by not turning their phone off would accept to take that risk and board a plane at all :)

If a phone can take down airline communications, there is something wrong with the aircraft. These should be properly shielded lines. There are now millions of hours of airline ops with phones on. It doesn’t cause any problems. Also hot tip: the pilots are using iPads the entire flight too. With Bluetooth and wifi often linked to other gadgets.

> These should be properly shielded lines.

Hehe, why do you assume the lines are a problem, when the physical comms system ends in a big antenna? Of course modern airliners have wiring that is all “properly” shielded.

> It doesn’t cause any problems.

Isn’t that a funny response to a pilot’s first hand account that a problem exists?

Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage

#586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you turn off wifi from settings instead of the control center (top right corner pull), it will stay turned off. If you turn it off from the control center, it will indeed say "Turning off WiFi until tomorrow".

Wow, this is amazing, thank you for sharing this! This was annoying me for years.

Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage

#587

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…

If there was ever a shade of a possibility that a cellphone or other electronic device could interfere with the operation of an aircraft, they'd never even let you take anything like that onboard.

The whole "turn off your devices" thing is more about validating compliance and making people pay attention during the most incident-prone times of flight (takeoff and landing)

Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage

#588
post #579
post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- I specifically mentioned 2G networks which AFAIK iPads do not even have, not WiFi or Bluetooth - It can't "take down" aircraft communications, but it can be an annoyance to the pilots, which can be a problem in an emergency situation. It is a little thing, but aviation safety is a result of a lot of little things. Accidents rarely have a single cause. For example the worst accident in the history of aviation: the T…

So when has this actually happened? There is a roughly zero percent chance that on any given flight, instructions to disable your phones are followed 100%. So, I think it's reasonable to suggest that literally every commercial flight flown in the past 15-ish years has done so with some device onboard that isn't in airplane mode. Given that - why aren't airplanes constantly falling out of the sky? If this is the situa…

What I meant is that we are not talking about absolutes here. There will be some cell phones turned on, sure, but the less there is, the less likely it is to become a problem.

And one of the reasons airplanes are not constantly falling out of the sky is that there are thousands of little rules and safety considerations at every level. Software, hardware, pilot training, ATC, and some of them affect passengers directly. For example one not so obvious rule is that the cabin lights are turned off at night during landing, the reason is to make sure the eyes of passengers are accommodated to a dark environment in case of an evacuation. Rules related to electronic devices are in that category.

Rules are much less stringent on general aviation, but general aviation is also much less safe than commercial aviation. Cessnas don't fall out of the sky constantly but they do it more often than Boeings. The ratio is about the same as motorbikes vs cars.

I repeat, cell phones won't make planes fall out of the sky by themselves! But if the plane is already in the unlikely situation where it is about to fall out of the sky, everyone needs to be fully alert to respond to the situation, and the authorities concluded that it is better without beeping cell phones. Has it saved lives? We don't know, but if we waited for someone to die to implement safety policies, we would have a lot of dead people.

The rules may change, in fact they are changing and cell phones are allowed in some flights, but please follow the damn rules, there are here for a reason even if it may not be obvious. Flying is intrinsically dangerous: deadly speeds, deadly heights and deadly outdoor conditions. And yet commercial aviation is one of the safest means of transportation, the likes of the FAA and EASA are doing at least some things right.

And on a more personal, subjective note: I think it is a good thing to disconnect once in a while.

Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage

#589
That was already brought up in August. Original source is an article in Wirtschaftswoche. As it's paywalled you might also get to the article at ifun: https://www.ifun.de/lufthansa-apple-airtag-an-fluggepaeck-ni...

More or less what they are saying is that Airtags are not allowed, but they don't enfoce a ban. You won't get anything more official. And that's not german at all - try arguing with TSA agents about rules.

Re: Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage

#590
post #538
post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no FUD in this comment. It's right on target.

It's FUD because OP cannot possibly know that "This is about them not wanting the public to see". That's pure speculation, and it fits the FUD definition perfectly.

And given that United, for one, gives me the exact same information (as far as I can tell) in their app about the location of my checked luggage as their computers have, it seems unlikely that one of their partner airlines would explicitly scheme to prevent people from knowing where their checked luggage is.

As others have said, this seems a case of AirTags possibly don't comply with long-established rules for checked luggage but, like a lot of the rules for electronics on commercial airplanes, the letter of these rules is broken in various ways probably tens of thousands of times every day.

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