I use luggage tracking tags. As you can see from the map at right, it looks like my medium-sized suitcase is at Porto Airport in Portugal. Actually the suitcase is with me right now at home in the mountains of Colorado. What explains this?
I use Tile tags to track my luggage. So far they have worked perfectly in the way that umbrellas work. As is well known, the mere fact that you went to the trouble to carry an umbrella tends to reduce greatly the risk of an unexpected rainfall. And, in the years since I started using Tile tags to track my luggage, not once has an airline lost any of my luggage. The tags do not cost very much money, and I feel it has been money well spent.
(Tracking tags have a “network effect”. What you want to do, if you are smart about it, is to use tags from some ecosystem that has many other users. You want it that somebody else’s smart phone might detect your lost suitcase and report it to the cloud, so that you can learn the location of the suitcase. There are two ecosystems that have enough users to make it work — the Apple airtag system, and the Tile system. I prefer Tile.)
On a recent trip something odd happened. I was on a flight from Colorado to California, and I clicked on my phone to see where my suitcase was, and was astonished to see that the suitcase was somewhere in Illinois. Upon my arrival in California, I was greatly relieved when my suitcase arrived on the baggage carousel as if nothing were out of the ordinary.
A week or so later, I clicked on my phone to see where my suitcase was, and I saw what you see above. The suitcase had come to rest at Porto Airport in Portugal.
I think the alert reader will arrive at the same explanation that I have arrived at. What must have happened is that the tag got snagged on something in the cargo hold of the airplane. And the tag got knocked loose from the suitcase. And, in the belly of the airplane, the tag then went on walkabout, first to Illinois and then to Portugal. Eventually somebody went in with a broom and swept out the cargo hold, and the tag is now somewhere in a trash heap in Portugal.
When I looked at the suitcase recently, indeed the tracking tag was missing from the suitcase. I have just now attached a new tracking tag to that suitcase.
That’s why I put the tracking tag IN my luggage 🙂
Ah but the signal travels much further (and thus is much more likely to be detected) if the tag is outside the suitcase.
Is there some reason you can’t place your tag inside the suitcase? Does that interfere with the location abilities? I use Apple Airtags, and I usually just drop one inside my luggage when I travel. I have not noticed any dropoff in the Airtag’s ability to report its position, and keeping it inside would seem to make it at least somewhat more difficult for a bad actor who wanted to take my suitcase to dispose of it.
My last trip to Colorado, I had to change planes in LAX. There United decided my luggage had to wait for another jet, while I happily made my connection to Adpen. Then Imsaw my bag im Nebraska as the flight it was on to Denver was diverted for weather. It eventually made its way to Denver then Aspen. All inside the bag