How an Apple AirTag Tracked Lost Luggage Much Better Than United

CNN tells the story of Sandra Shuster, who'd included an airtag with her daughter's $2,000 lacrosse kit on a flight to Denver (with a stop-over in Chicago's O'Hare airport):When they arrived at Denver after midnight, the bag wasn't on the belt. United representatives at Denver gave them a case number and told them the bag should arrive on the 8.30 a.m. flight from Chicago in just a few hours. When it didn't, Shuster called the toll-free number for lost baggage that she'd been given. "They said, 'Your bag's going to come in later today on one of two flights.' I said 'OK, great,' but it never came. So I called later that afternoon and they said 'Your bag is still in Baltimore,'" says Shuster. There was just one problem: she already knew it wasn't in Baltimore. Three months earlier, Shuster had bought an AirTag - Apple's tracking devices - to know where her daughter's bag was... [T]he AirTag was showing as being at baggage reclaim at O'Hare. "I told them I could see it at Terminal 1 baggage reclaim in Chicago, and they said 'We have no record of it.' I asked them to call Chicago, and they said 'No, we're not allowed.' They said they'd put notes in the system and the baggage team would take care of it." The airline had mistakenly attached another customer's baggage-claim number to the luggage - so when it arrived at the stop-over in Chicago, baggage handlers couldn't know its ultimate destination, and it was moved to the "reclaim" belt. There were several more communication misfires - but fortunately, Shuster had more than 30,000 unused air miles... "I jumped on the plane, flew to Chicago, got to baggage claim, and it took them 30 seconds to give me my bag..." Shuster tells CNN. "What was difficult to comprehend was that it would have taken one call to Chicago to locate it, and nobody seemed able to do that... You can't tell me in this day and age, with all the technology available, that they can't figure this stuff out. Airlines need to do better." United later refunded Shuster's air miles, along with an apology "for the inconvenience you experienced on your recent trip with United."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.