Do I really need a luggage tracker?

Travel writer Tamara Hinson explains how the humble luggage tracker has transformed her travels.

I want to start by making something very clear. I’ve never been the type of person to thrust my
phone in an airline employee’s face and announce that I’m not prepared to board the plane because my personal luggage tracker suggests that my suitcase might not be joining me on the flight in question.

But last week’s case of lost luggage was a timely reminder of the benefits of tracking checked bags. It was moments before the final boarding call rang out that I glanced at the app connected to my Apple Air Tag – a dollar-sized device I place in my suitcase and which uses Bluetooth to track my luggage through my iPhone’s “find my” app – and noticed my luggage was nowhere near the Peru-bound plane I was about to board at Amsterdam airport. I tentatively pointed this out to the airline employee herding the remaining stragglers on to the plane and was told the last pieces of luggage were still being loaded. The airline in question had lost my luggage before, and once onboard I asked a member of cabin crew for a progress report. A few minutes later he approached my seat with the look of an annoyed parent tired of placating an over-anxious child. “It’s just been loaded,” he declared, adding somewhat smugly: “See, I told you those trackers aren’t that accurate.” (It turned out he was wrong on both counts).

So it was even more frustrating to be informed upon arrival at Lima airport by a clipboard-wielding airline employee that my bag was one of several which hadn’t been loaded – something I already knew on account of my tracker making it very clear my suitcase was on an entirely different continent. It had never left Amsterdam, in a nutshell, despite the fact I’d had a three-hour layover there – more than enough time for my bags to be transferred on to the next flight (I was travelling from London to Peru via Amsterdam on a single ticket). I won’t bore you with the details, but the next 72 hours were a maddening blur of misinformation. I was told my bag would arrive in Cusco within 24 hours (I’d landed in Lima but needed to take my pre-booked flight to Cusco the next day, albeit with no toothbrush or clean underwear). It didn’t. I was given a constant stream of misinformation about its location, requiring me to correct various airline employees who, when presented with the evidence, told me that it didn’t matter, because my luggage needed to appear on their system so that its official status could be updated. Which was fine, but my tracking data clearly showed it was languishing in Amsterdam and in no apparent rush to cross the Atlantic Ocean. And when the updated location on my app showed it was finally en route, it was me who had to update the team tasked with intercepting my bag at Lima airport and putting it on a flight to Cusco. A particular highlight was being told, at one point, that it was en route to Glasgow, Scotland, 12 hours after I could clearly see it had arrived in Lima.

Here’s my point. I get that luggage goes missing. But when it does – despite the scanners, electronic labels and in-house tracking systems – a growing number of airlines seem unable to track where the luggage has got to, or have any inclination to do anything other than sit back and wait until it shows up. Desperate for someone to actually investigate what the problem might be? It’s almost certainly going to be a case of “computer says no”. If it weren’t for my tracker, I’d have been left at the mercy of the airline employees who repeatedly told me it was somewhere it wasn’t. Call me obsessive, but this saga is the reason I’ve now got several trackers from various brands, including a Chipolo tracker in my passport wallet and a Tile tracker I place in my backpack.

In reality, the vast majority of bags arrive on time. So for me, having a personal luggage tracker is definitely more about peace of mind – knowing that if the worst happens, which it’s (apparently) unlikely to, I’ll at least have a fairly decent idea of where my bag is, even if nobody else does. And I no longer wait by luggage belts trying to quell my nausea as I picture myself brushing my teeth with a stick (okay, that’s an exaggeration but you get my point) because (in most cases) I can immediately see it’s arrived at the airport it was destined for.

The good news? Despite the fact that in 2022, 26 million pieces of luggage were lost, delayed or damaged according to research analysed by the BBC, recent data suggests that the situation is improving as airports and airlines get to grips with pre-pandemic passenger numbers. More airport staff and better luggage tracking technology are also helping airlines keep tabs on luggage, according to Sita, a company responsible for the IT systems used by 90 per cent of airlines.

Although I’m at pains to point out that if you happen to own one of those bags which fall into that fateful 10 per cent (bearing in mind the reason my luggage went missing was, according to the airline, its tracking technology malfunctioning), don’t rely on their systems to reunite you with your possessions within 24 hours. Instead, invest in a decent tracking device for guaranteed piece of mind. Okay, in a worst-case-scenario situation it might well tell you that your suitcase has ended up in Glasgow, not Cusco, but knowledge, as they say, is power. In theory…..