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".
It is unclear wether they really understood how AirTags work and that they are not active trackers.
There are a bunch of other magazine echoing this response but I have yet to find an official statement by Lufthansa explicitly banning AirTags.
Translation of the cited statement by the Lufthansa spokesperson:
“Baggage trackers belong to the category of Portable Electronic Devices and are therefore subject to the Dangerous Goods regulations issued by the International Civil Aviation Organization for carriage in aircraft. Accordingly, the trackers must be deactivated during the flight due to their transmission function, similar to cell phones, laptops, tablets, etc., if they are in the checked baggage.”
Part 2E makes a battery handling label exception for button cells, quote: "except that button cells installed in equipment (including circuit boards) need not be considered."
While this is packaging guidance, and not airline guidance, I expect it's the same rule, for the same reason.
This section makes it even more confusing to me, since I thought that the whole cell phone transmission restriction theater had been removed a few years ago. Was that only within the US and I've been violating EU regulations for years?
So do cargo monitoring (temperature/tilt/vibration/tampering) devices, which are in a lot of commercial cargo - especially vaccine shipments, but any sort of sensitive equipment being air-freighted.
So do wireless earbuds, watches both smart and "dumb", hearing aides, sport sensors including chest heartrate monitors and bike sensors/computers, travel alarms, book lights, e-readers, keychain flashlights, film cameras, and probably a million other things Lufthansa has never cared about for several decades.
The vast majority of electronic devices are "soft" power now, and an e-reader with a 2000mah lithium ion battery is as "powered off" as an Airtag with a sub-3-gram battery. Airpods - no "completely" switched off mode, same for their case.
There's also never been a single case of an Airtag shorting or smoking or failing in any way that would endanger an airplane, and CR2032 batteries can't generate enough current, or contain enough energy, to pose a hazard.
For decades the airline industry had no problem shipping exothermic oxygen generators with little or no regulation (because it suited them well, as they needed to do so for logistics, as the generators are for emergency passenger oxygen) until it caused multiple commercial plane crashes. If you think Lufthansa is suddenly concerned about safety here, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.
This is about them not wanting the public to see:
- that their luggage isn't on the plane with them, and generating a fuss at the gate / in the plane
- that their luggage is in a specific place/airport and come calling for it or say "I can see exactly where it is, stop lying to me, it's at airport _____, send it to me"
- their stolen luggage ending up at an employee's home, or the warehouse of a theft ring run by luggage handlers which the company is ignoring
- their "lost" luggage ending up at a warehouse where it is then sold by the pound to companies that sort through your luggage and ebay anything of value
They really hate that customers now have the power to see that they're being lied to and/or stolen from, and be held accountable.
Lufthansa gave a non-answer, and there's nothing in their comment suggesting they've banned airtags in checked luggage. They will also have an impossible time enforcing it.
The site "covering this" is focused on creating travel content to push credit card affiliate links. They (like most) benefit from clickbait articles that will get picked up around the web, giving them backlinks to improve SEO ranking for a competitive niche.
I'm not super familiar with these systems, but don't they send out beacons using something like Bluetooth Low Energy or some similar protocol? That wouldn't be just passive and turned off unless something external powers it (like NFC could be argued to be).
(Which is not to say that it's therefore a valid argument by this airline, but the title seems accurate if the trackers are sending out signals actively and that's what's prohibited.)
AirTags doesn’t report its location, the iPhone or other iOS devices report nearby AirTags. That’s the difference between an active tracker that has its own cellular connection.
Don't the premises "AirTags are only allowed in checked bags if they're turned off" and "AirTags can't be turned off" lead to the conclusion "AirTags aren't allowed in checked bags"?
Sure. Just like a bazillion other coin cell powered nrf52 devices. Or like a coin cell powered digital watch. Would an F91-W be allowed in checked luggage? Perhaps not, not unless there is a specific exception. And if you ask some policy communication employee, they won't make up exceptions, they'll apply the rules at hand.
AirTags are pretty much active devices, they transmit data all the time. If some iPhone happens to receive that data, iPhone relays it to Apple servers and adds coordinates where it received data.
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.
At one point, when both cell phones and laptops were new, there was perhaps a risk to the airplane's electronics. Modern cell phones have been steadily tuned to reduce interference with other electronics though - good thing, otherwise you couldn't use them in a modern home with its dozens of connected devices. And modern avionics have been shielded to protect them from outside electronic interference - also a good thing, otherwise the next terrorist could simply turn their laptop on. The ban on electronic transmission is one of those regulations that was a response to technology at a particular point in time but now is largely vestigial. You can tell because it's rarely enforced, and yet bad things do not occur just because you forgot to turn your phone to airplane mode.
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.
It'll be in good company with dialing, film, photograph, watching the tube, etc.
Actually photograph was already out of date, because graph had morphed from "to write" to making any kind of image. Which itself I believe meant something akin to inscription /engraving.
Actually while photograph may no longer be a graph as in image on a surface, in some ways it's still an image impressed on rocks. Made using lithography. Have we gotten closer to its roots?
Well, maybe. My kids seem to have taken it for granted that clicking on that weird square thing that we know as a floppy disk icon saves their work, somewhere. I don't think they ever asked why that symbol.
I once forgot to put my cell phone in airplane mode during a flight from London to SFO (and didn't use my phone during the flight). I was rather alarmed to see a flood of text messages from my carrier welcoming me to Iceland, Canada, and the US upon my landing.
That sounds... Improbable. When you were passing over Iceland you must have been far too far above the antennas to receive any sort of signal, unless it landed there on the way across the ocean?
Realistically there isn't an issue with leaving a cell phone on and out of airplane mode going purely based on how many people forget or ignore the directions everyday and how infrequently there are problems. But I'll make two points:
The idea that a cell phone transmitter can interfere with an airplane is by no means outrageous. Sure, a modern iPhone/Pixel/whatever has to meet certain emissions and interference standards. And modern airliners are designed with some interference rejection in mind. And ancient airliners from the 70s don't rely on a lot of electronic systems at all. As for airplanes designed in the 90s, well it's not silly to ask whether 200 people with 1W transmitters would interfere with the electronic systems. A properly functioning compliant phone shouldn't, but there's still some risk. Incidents do happen, though they are generally minor. I was on an airplane that had to abort a landing and go-around because they couldn't hear the tower over cellphone interference (voice comms are analog). Obviously no one died, but we were still delayed a bit.
It probably makes sense to relax the rules, but it is incredibly frustrating to see the attitude of "if they don't force me to turn it off it must be OK". The FCC requires you to turn off transmitters to avoid interference. The airline asks you to do so for the same reason. Experts in the field (myself included) are telling you there's a small risk and you should hit the airplane mode button. There's zero benefit to keeping your cellular service active in flight at all. But everyone's seen some article on Facebook (or in this case inverse.com) that says maybe there's a big conspiracy and everyone's lying to them. So they take a risk (albeit an extremely small one) with the lives of 200 other people. For no gain at all.
So do whatever you want, there's nothing I can do about human nature, but believe me when I tell you there's no government conspiracy to make you press the little airplane button funded by the cell phone companies. Yeah, the risk is probably negligible - it's just really hard to prove it and easier to make a small ask of passengers.
A few airlines (Etihad is one that comes to mind) operate mini cells on the plan and you can roam on a local 4G network and makes calls/use data. If I recall correctly it’s switched off on takeoff and landing but you can definitely use your phone on these flights.
I suppose this issue will actually fix itself with the advent of cheap Internet onboard the plane via WiFi, which combined with VoWiFi, will effectively switch cell off automatically when connected. People are more likely to use free WiFi onboard than to voluntarily remember to switch the Airplane Mode on.
I went on six flights this summer and on each one at least one person was talking on the phone during takeoff. The flight attendants didn't even say anything. I think this request has passed.
Cell phone cells are (ideally) shaped to account for the expected pattern of how handover will occur. Along roads and train lines, the cells are (at least in GSM) supposed to be tailored to allow for easy routing and handover as the devices travels in the direction of the way.
While I have never read anything concretely analyzing the handover pattern of devices on airplanes, I would expect that since a very large number of cells are almost equally visible/equal signal strength, the network would have to frequently handover the device from one cell to another.
The handover process is, for voice traffic, very resource intense. (in GSM) it involves duplication of traffic to the neighboring cell and a lot of coordination.
I think that could be the reason for why mobile operators find airplane-borne devices annoying.
The cell tower network is designed to cope with devices located on the surface of the planet, i.e. where the geometry between the handsets and the tower is roughly two-dimensional.
I am also unconvinced that handsets on aeroplanes are really a problem for the network, but trains aren't the counterexample you're making them out to be.
At 20 miles out, a device on the ground starts losing line of sight, at 20 miles out, a device on an airplane starts receiving horizontal line of sight.
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 built assuming lots of cell handoffs at roughly highway speeds. 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.
It doesn't track in any way. In the airport there's small cells or femtocells by the operators. In the air, the only cells you can reach are the one pointing upwards.
Also, they don't really ask for airplane mode anymore, at least not when I'm flying.
Trains move significantly slower than planes. They're also on the ground, mostly below the towers, while planes are in the air, moving very fast, with multiple towers in line of sight.
Doubly doesn't track as airplane mode is often required during takeoff and landing, which barring controlled or uncontrolled flight into terrain usually happens at the airport, where you and the so many folks taking the same airplane as well as several other airplanes are not required to take their cell phone off as a courtesy to operators.
I can get the EM interference angle just fine, which stays (or stayed until recently) in place as a vestigial CYA rule of a time when cell phones were crude enough to be able to produce a spark which is what makes gas stations display a "no cellphone" sign to this day because back then it could ignite gasoline vapour.
Trains aren’t traveling at 400-700 mph ground speed. At best they might be doing 225mph. The rate you pass by towers is thus lower.
Trains also have trees, hills, buildings, earth curvature, etc obstructing how many towers your phone can see. Planes generally have a clear LOS to the tower over a significantly larger area because of the altitude.
If the radiation pattern of the tower wasn’t the shape that it is, the problem would be even worse in fact.
US resident here. What is a train? Those things that move cows, oil, and cars across those rusty bits of metal? I don't think those are suitable for human transportation.
Re: "Rather, 300-500 cell phones all trying to contact the next cell tower..."
That might have been a concern when 2.5G was cutting edge and HLR/VLR databases ran on Sun hardware of the period. Even then, hundreds of updates in a couple seconds was not a huge challenge.
Like a lot of what airlines tell customers, it is a self-serving version of reality, strongly colored for airlines' convenience and deniability.
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)
Before landing on the last flight I was on, the flight attendants requested that everyone turn off their phones (even if in airplane mode) due to the weather conditions while landing. Does anyone know what purpose that could possibly serve?
The France clue actually contradicts my guess, because I'm guessing that was an Airbus? Anyways, he's one theory:
Boeing has an issue where its radio altimeters are affected by C-band 5G transmissions. I believe maybe the pilots were relying more on the precision of the altimeter because their vision was impaired due to the bad weather? The whole 'turn off phones' instruction could be because people would follow the unusual request to turn off their phones instead of just telling them to put it in airplane mode (which is so common that some people just don't bother)
Probably because the pilots were going to be flying an IFR approach. (flying on just instruments through low visibility near the ground, a worst-case scenario for interference being able to cause a fatal crash)
I would argue the airlines and airplane manufacturers are far more at fault here.
The fact that aircraft systems are sensitive to frequencies outside their allocation is ridiculous. If literally anyone else was camping on frequency bands they didn't have the rights to the various regulatory bodies would be up in arms.
Sure, but base stations are going to be your main worry there, since they put out way more power than user devices and the antenna of a radio altimeter will be quite directional and pointing down.
TLDR; the aviation industry had a decent technical study done on radio altimeter interference from 5G and the FCC determined it didn’t show radio altimeter interference from 5G was likely. Then an aggregated summary of that technical data was shared with an aviation industry group (whose members include radio altimeter manufacturers), and that group used the aggregated data to claim any 5G use would likely lead to catastrophic crashes and multiple fatalities.
As a private pilot and software engineer interested in spectrum policy, I’ve been following this closely for years as it’s wound it’s way through the FAA. I have yet to see any convincing, reproducible evidence that any radio altimeters that are operating within specification (filtering out all signal below 4.2 GHz) have malfunctioned due to interference from 5G cellular signals. The one thing the FAA and airline industry claim as evidence is a study by an industry group (Radio Technical Committee for Aeronautics), whose members include radio altimeter manufacturers who would benefit from large retrofits/upgrades. The RTCA didn’t actually do any of their own testing, they received aggregated data from AVSI, a Texas A&M aerospace research group, which had done a study in 2019 on radio altimeters interference. In 2020 the FCC determined that AVSI study “does not demonstrate that harmful interference would likely result under reasonable scenarios (or even reasonably 'foreseeable' scenarios to use the parlance of AVSI)”. Then, two years later when the FAA went to the NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration), which is the agency tasked with managing federal spectrum and agency spectrum disputes, and demanded they stop the FCC from letting carriers turn on networks in the C-band, the NTIA refused because its own technical experts had already evaluated the technical data that RTCA used as evidence that any 5G use of 3.7 GHz - 3.98 GHz band would cause interference severe enough to cause a catastrophic crash resulting hull loss.
Also, when this whole fiasco unfolded neither Verizon or AT&T had spectrum even close to the radio altimeters band. Of the C-band spectrum (3.7 GHz to 3.98 GHz) that was auctioned off a few years ago, only Block A which is between 3.7 GHz and 3.8 GHz was being used. So in addition to the existing, and potentially larger than technically required, 220 MHz guard band between 4.2 GHz (where radio altimeters start) and 3.98 GHz, when the airlines were threatening to cancel service to the US and the FAA was waging a PR war against the FCC the spectrum in question was 3.7 GHz - 3.8 GHz. Even if Verizon and AT&T rolled out 100% of the 5G spectrum they had the ability to use in 2021, it would have meant 5G cell service was within 400 MHz of the radio altimeter spectrum. The entire allocated band for radio altimeters is only 200 MHz (4.2 GHz - 4.4 GHz). Additionally, other countries like Japan have cellular providers operating in 4.0 GHz - 4.1 GHz. Japanese aviation officials (unlike the FAA) actually configured different types of 5G equipment and radio altimeters and tested them, including to see the minimum guard band needed. They found 60 MHz was the minimum guard band needed and therefore the “standard” 100 MHz guard band would be fine. They also found you shouldn’t install 5G towers directly below the approach path of an airport, but that even high powered 5G base stations won’t interfere with radio altimeters if they are 200m away.
I think by far the most comprehensive explainer for this whole saga is by Harold Feld of public knowledge, which if you’re not familiar is a nonprofit advocating for an open internet which includes white papers and FCC testimony on spectrum policy they view as beneficial the public, such as allocating more of the federal government, specifically the military’s, huge bands of essentially unused spectrum. It’s on his personal blog. https://wetmachine.com/tales-of-the-sausage-factory/what-the...
> Rather, 300-500 cell phones all trying to contact the next cell tower, multiple times per minute, would wreak havoc on cell service.
I'm probably being a simpleton, but this sounds like inadequate firmware to me. At the very least: Airtags have GPS, so shut them off when they are at $ALTITUDE.
They don't appear to have GPS. Rather they contact local Apple devices over Bluetooth, and those devices know where they are. But then they don't have cellular access either, so this discussion is moot.
There definitely was theoretical risk with 2G-era mobile phones, which blasted considerable amounts of radiation.
I was in university once doing a signal interference lab: we had set up an circuit and we're trying to induce current in it from another circuit. Suddenly the oscilloscope on the receiving end showed a couple of wild spikes, and I received a text message on my trusty Nokia 1611: apparently 900 MHz was in the sweet spot.
I don’t think that’s true, or at least how you worded it is bad. Events of thousands of people don’t make you turn off your cell phone, so it’s not because of traffic to a tower. Instead, it’s interference caused by altitude and the pinging of towers.
It’s actually an FCC regulation that requires it, so it’s not a courtesy as you say.
> I don’t think that’s true, or at least how you worded it is bad. Events of thousands of people don’t make you turn off your cell phone, so it’s not because of traffic to a tower.
First of all, if you've ever been to an event with hundreds or thousands of people (such as a parade or a rally), you'll notice that even though you have "full bars", your service is degraded beyond usability, and you'll receive text messages hours late.
But in this case, the issue is that people's phones will be trying to connect to many different towers in short succession, as the plane travels.
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 do see how they'd find it bothersome. Imagine what it must be like that the situation before was: "Oh no my baggage is lost!" "Oooh that's rough! We'll let ya know!" then nothing.
Where now what it might be like is: "Oh no my baggage is lost at XYZ airport at your terminal" and that accountability is somewhat forced now because they can't just say it wasn't found or it is 'in transit' when it really isn't.
FWIW I showed an AA baggage customer service rep the location of my bag (within 200ft of where we were standing), the response I got was, “that’s nice, we’ll get you your bag when we get you your bag” - so while it’s nice to know where your bag is, the airlines will continue to not care until there are financial consequences for not delivering as promised.
How is it bothersome? People are doing their job and telling them where the bag is. They should be happy when customers go the extra mile to fix their broken system.
I get that it's inconvenient and could be used nefariously. I'm not sure what kinds of worker protections airline staff have in Europe, but I can see why it might be problematic that I'm tracking the employee as they drive their van full of lost luggage to my hotel.
Still, it's my stuff, so I'm going to keep putting AirTags in every bag I travel with. I'm sorry, but.. what are they going to do? Ban me from the airline?
I don’t see why it’s problematic to see where your bag is. The employee isn’t driving from their home with your luggage- and if they were, there are bigger problems.
You have a point where he may make multiple stops which may include the personal addresses of folks also on your flight. But I can’t imagine you have enough ability to match a person with an address this way.
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.
> at least not while airlines are still constantly losing luggage and fighting people on reimbursement.
Hah, if you're in the United States you should be fine. Federal law forces the airlines to reimburse you, even for just delayed baggage [0].
Last year my bag was delayed a few days on a trip to the mountains. My airline paid the cost to replace all of the clothing and other material in my bag. I think it ended up being ~$2100 worth. I bought items comparable to what I had brought, e.g. a lot of high-quality thermal clothing, some board games, chargers, etc, and I got to keep all of it.
> 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.
American Airlines self-reported a baggage mishandling rate just short of 1% this year. That seems really high to be honest, when you consider that most planes have a minimum of 150 passengers.
2022 was an anomalous year since the airlines ramped up their schedules without having support staff at the airports to handle it. The statistics seem to indicate a tripling of lost luggage rates.
It happens and just like the meme they drive it hours to you once found, even across states. Just happened my sister and brother in law who had trained to another state by the time theirs was found.
It's been a big issue in the UK for the last few months, as airports struggled to find enough baggage handlers. So luggage was getting left all over, massive buildups, effectively "lost" until they have enough manpower to process it all.
This is going to have the opposite of their intended effect. People are now going to be more interested than ever in AirTags precisely for luggages thanks to them.
I land, and before I check my texts I check for my bags.
They have almost always already been reported to the find my network and I have peace of mind.
Even at the baggage carousels. I just activate “Find” and it tells me if my bag is “near by” and rarely it’ll even give me the arrow pointing at my luggage.
I didn’t even realize that I was previously micro-stressing about this stuff. But I can definitely tell the change I’ve had in mental state with an AirTag in my luggage.
Given the top comment I'm not sure this had an intended effect. They were asked a question and quoted the relevant ICAO rules. What were you expecting them to do? Urge their customers to break the law?
I was able to determine that someone with the exact same bag had taken mine from baggage claim and retrieve it from them before they left the airport with it. We both had much better vacations as a result. I’m going to keep mine in my luggage, sorry.
what a joke, I guess that's one way to deal with their terrible luggage handling..
I've been now waiting since a flight on August 20th to receive my "lost" luggage from them. I guess policy like this is easier than fixing the actual issue.
The only update I've gotten is this email two weeks ago, their hotline and website are completely useless. Via DeepL
> Good day,
> We apologize that you have not yet received your luggage and for the inconvenience this has caused. We regret that we are currently unable to meet our standards for a smooth travel experience.
> Why are there delays?
> There are currently massive logistical and personnel failures and bottlenecks worldwide, which are delaying baggage handling in particular. The world of flying is highly interconnected. We are dependent on our global partners here and are thus confronted with numerous challenges.
> We are working hard to ensure that all delayed baggage is delivered within the coming weeks.
> If you would like to check the baggage status yourself, please use the baggage status page only. Our telephone service centers will not be able to assist with any questions regarding your baggage.
luggage this summer in europe has been a mess. air france lost my bag in paris on june 12 and has neglected to compensate me or return it. no way to get a hold of anyone who can do anything either-- left me wishing i had put an airtag in there myself.
You’d think they’re stuck in a luggage area and airtags would help you hasten them getting to you? Not sure how it’d solve a logistics problem that is not yours but the airline’s.
Thinking further I think the airlines should stick their own air tags on luggage while in transit and get it back when customer picks up their luggage (could be a deposit based system). This would help them automatically track all luggage.
Usually the handling of luggage is not by air france (or other carrier), it is the specific airport personnel, so called "ground-services".
Most airports cut down personnel due to Covid-19 and when the amount of flights quickly ramped up to previous (or possibly higher than before) levels couldn't manage (or did not want) to find/hire/re-hire enough personnel.
When this happens, the luggage is normally stored in a hangar or other warehouse at the airport, far from passenger traffic, and with access reserved to these ground service personnel, so the most you would get with an airtag (if any of the personnel has an iPhone) is that your luggage still exists in a place which you cannot have access to, no way to collect it.
“ Lufthansa claims that the transmission function needs to be turned off during flight when in checked luggage, just as is required for cell phones, laptops, etc.”
On my phone, turning on airplane mode seems to disable the cell and wifi radios (with wifi able to be toggled back on) but Bluetooth defaults to staying on.
Yeah that is... a non argument by Lufthansa -- i will be polite. (Resources: Here is for FAA, EU ruling is similar: https://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/ped/ — check the FAQ also.)
They technically can -— the best kind of can I guess —- but it is not in the spirit of course of ILS interference (@108-112 MHz) with Bluetooth at 2.45 GHz and extremely low range. Hell the pilot is likely to have their iPad with Bluetooth on during all plane operations.
FAA expects to be communicating with mature individuals and entities and not this in their guidelines.
With the same thinking they can ban pacemakers and all cordless headphones, and …breathing. Good luck to Lufthansa. They just declared their baggage handling sucks.
Huh, I'd have assumed (and remembered?) that airplane mode turned off all transmission, but I suppose with the huge increase in Bluetooth headphones that would be quite inconvenient, so maybe it was changed.
It also sounds incredibly dumb when you think about how checked luggage gets scanned and searched. Isn't it typically after you've dropped it off with airline staff and have walked away towards a terminal gate? And when they find an airtag in checked luggage, how can they tell by looking at the airtag itself if "transmission function" has been turned off???
It seems to me they either have to throw away all airtags they find in luggage, or they have to check everyones' phones inside the airplane before they take off, or they're just bluffing.
I have no doubt that they'll do exactly this. They'll likely stick them into an RF-blocking pouch first, then destroy them all. You won't get it back, you won't get any compensation, and they'll point to their policies as to why.
Apple could add a pressure sensor and disable transmission while in the air. Yes, might be not working for Tahoe or Mexico City but work in most places.
Why would doing that be in Apple's interest? Also, consider that the air pressure in airline cabins is about the same as it is on the ground in Santa Fe, NM.
It's a bullshit excuse and they know it. Lufthansa even has on-board WiFi on their planes. How are you going to use it if your laptop is supposed to have "transmission function" turned off?
They just don't want people to have proof they've lost their luggage.
IATA guidance is "Any tracking device with a transmitting function must automatically shut down when inside the aircraft." The cargo tracker industry has already dealt with this. Cargo trackers are usually GSM devices with GPS receivers. Those have to turn themselves off when in flight, and that seems to be working OK.[1]
For low-power devices that don't turn off, there's DO-160() Section 21 Cat. H evaluation [2].
This is the EU standard for equipment intended for use aboard aircraft. Emissions must be
very low for that.
Apple AirTags emit a ultrawideband signal for location, and use low-energy Bluetooth for local communication. Whether that can pass Category H evaluation (the toughest spec, OK next to an antenna) or even Category M evaluation (inside the cabin) is a good question. Not sure about UWB.
Readit News
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".
It is unclear wether they really understood how AirTags work and that they are not active trackers.
There are a bunch of other magazine echoing this response but I have yet to find an official statement by Lufthansa explicitly banning AirTags.
“Baggage trackers belong to the category of Portable Electronic Devices and are therefore subject to the Dangerous Goods regulations issued by the International Civil Aviation Organization for carriage in aircraft. Accordingly, the trackers must be deactivated during the flight due to their transmission function, similar to cell phones, laptops, tablets, etc., if they are in the checked baggage.”
This likely refers to the following regulations: https://www.icao.int/safety/DangerousGoods/
From the 2017 addendum no. 2:
“Portable electronic devices containing lithium metal or lithium ion cells or batteries […]
d) if devices are carried in checked baggage:
— measures must be taken to prevent unintentional activation and to protect the devices from damage; and
— the devices must be completely switched off (not in sleep or hibernation mode);
”Note that the AirTag batteries contain lithium.
So Lufthansa is merely citing the applicable ICAO regulations, which presumably apply to all civil airlines.
I'm basing that judgement on this: https://www.icao.int/safety/DangerousGoods/Documents/Guidanc...
Part 2E makes a battery handling label exception for button cells, quote: "except that button cells installed in equipment (including circuit boards) need not be considered."
While this is packaging guidance, and not airline guidance, I expect it's the same rule, for the same reason.
So do wireless earbuds, watches both smart and "dumb", hearing aides, sport sensors including chest heartrate monitors and bike sensors/computers, travel alarms, book lights, e-readers, keychain flashlights, film cameras, and probably a million other things Lufthansa has never cared about for several decades.
The vast majority of electronic devices are "soft" power now, and an e-reader with a 2000mah lithium ion battery is as "powered off" as an Airtag with a sub-3-gram battery. Airpods - no "completely" switched off mode, same for their case.
There's also never been a single case of an Airtag shorting or smoking or failing in any way that would endanger an airplane, and CR2032 batteries can't generate enough current, or contain enough energy, to pose a hazard.
For decades the airline industry had no problem shipping exothermic oxygen generators with little or no regulation (because it suited them well, as they needed to do so for logistics, as the generators are for emergency passenger oxygen) until it caused multiple commercial plane crashes. If you think Lufthansa is suddenly concerned about safety here, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.
This is about them not wanting the public to see:
- that their luggage isn't on the plane with them, and generating a fuss at the gate / in the plane
- that their luggage is in a specific place/airport and come calling for it or say "I can see exactly where it is, stop lying to me, it's at airport _____, send it to me"
- their stolen luggage ending up at an employee's home, or the warehouse of a theft ring run by luggage handlers which the company is ignoring
- their "lost" luggage ending up at a warehouse where it is then sold by the pound to companies that sort through your luggage and ebay anything of value
They really hate that customers now have the power to see that they're being lied to and/or stolen from, and be held accountable.
The site "covering this" is focused on creating travel content to push credit card affiliate links. They (like most) benefit from clickbait articles that will get picked up around the web, giving them backlinks to improve SEO ranking for a competitive niche.
(Which is not to say that it's therefore a valid argument by this airline, but the title seems accurate if the trackers are sending out signals actively and that's what's prohibited.)
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. Modern cell phones have been steadily tuned to reduce interference with other electronics though - good thing, otherwise you couldn't use them in a modern home with its dozens of connected devices. And modern avionics have been shielded to protect them from outside electronic interference - also a good thing, otherwise the next terrorist could simply turn their laptop on. The ban on electronic transmission is one of those regulations that was a response to technology at a particular point in time but now is largely vestigial. You can tell because it's rarely enforced, and yet bad things do not occur just because you forgot to turn your phone to airplane mode.
Actually photograph was already out of date, because graph had morphed from "to write" to making any kind of image. Which itself I believe meant something akin to inscription /engraving.
Actually while photograph may no longer be a graph as in image on a surface, in some ways it's still an image impressed on rocks. Made using lithography. Have we gotten closer to its roots?
(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
‘Because of the long historical association of activating that mode on airplane flights?’
“Well, yeah, but, like, it’s actually anachronistic, because it doesn’t really affect the airplane anymore if you’re transmitting.”
‘Okay, but, I mean, it is the mode that, even today, in 2060, most commonly comes up when you’re on a pla—‘
“Look, I was just trying to sound wise. Just let me have this one.”
“Well Nancy, before instant interdimensional travel…”
Realistically there isn't an issue with leaving a cell phone on and out of airplane mode going purely based on how many people forget or ignore the directions everyday and how infrequently there are problems. But I'll make two points:
The idea that a cell phone transmitter can interfere with an airplane is by no means outrageous. Sure, a modern iPhone/Pixel/whatever has to meet certain emissions and interference standards. And modern airliners are designed with some interference rejection in mind. And ancient airliners from the 70s don't rely on a lot of electronic systems at all. As for airplanes designed in the 90s, well it's not silly to ask whether 200 people with 1W transmitters would interfere with the electronic systems. A properly functioning compliant phone shouldn't, but there's still some risk. Incidents do happen, though they are generally minor. I was on an airplane that had to abort a landing and go-around because they couldn't hear the tower over cellphone interference (voice comms are analog). Obviously no one died, but we were still delayed a bit.
It probably makes sense to relax the rules, but it is incredibly frustrating to see the attitude of "if they don't force me to turn it off it must be OK". The FCC requires you to turn off transmitters to avoid interference. The airline asks you to do so for the same reason. Experts in the field (myself included) are telling you there's a small risk and you should hit the airplane mode button. There's zero benefit to keeping your cellular service active in flight at all. But everyone's seen some article on Facebook (or in this case inverse.com) that says maybe there's a big conspiracy and everyone's lying to them. So they take a risk (albeit an extremely small one) with the lives of 200 other people. For no gain at all.
So do whatever you want, there's nothing I can do about human nature, but believe me when I tell you there's no government conspiracy to make you press the little airplane button funded by the cell phone companies. Yeah, the risk is probably negligible - it's just really hard to prove it and easier to make a small ask of passengers.
I suppose this issue will actually fix itself with the advent of cheap Internet onboard the plane via WiFi, which combined with VoWiFi, will effectively switch cell off automatically when connected. People are more likely to use free WiFi onboard than to voluntarily remember to switch the Airplane Mode on.
This doesn’t track. What about trains?
While I have never read anything concretely analyzing the handover pattern of devices on airplanes, I would expect that since a very large number of cells are almost equally visible/equal signal strength, the network would have to frequently handover the device from one cell to another.
The handover process is, for voice traffic, very resource intense. (in GSM) it involves duplication of traffic to the neighboring cell and a lot of coordination.
I think that could be the reason for why mobile operators find airplane-borne devices annoying.
I am also unconvinced that handsets on aeroplanes are really a problem for the network, but trains aren't the counterexample you're making them out to be.
At 20 miles out, a device on the ground starts losing line of sight, at 20 miles out, a device on an airplane starts receiving horizontal line of sight.
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 built assuming lots of cell handoffs at roughly highway speeds. 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.
Also, they don't really ask for airplane mode anymore, at least not when I'm flying.
I can get the EM interference angle just fine, which stays (or stayed until recently) in place as a vestigial CYA rule of a time when cell phones were crude enough to be able to produce a spark which is what makes gas stations display a "no cellphone" sign to this day because back then it could ignite gasoline vapour.
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Trains also have trees, hills, buildings, earth curvature, etc obstructing how many towers your phone can see. Planes generally have a clear LOS to the tower over a significantly larger area because of the altitude.
If the radiation pattern of the tower wasn’t the shape that it is, the problem would be even worse in fact.
That might have been a concern when 2.5G was cutting edge and HLR/VLR databases ran on Sun hardware of the period. Even then, hundreds of updates in a couple seconds was not a huge challenge.
Like a lot of what airlines tell customers, it is a self-serving version of reality, strongly colored for airlines' convenience and deniability.
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)
This was in France if that's a relevant clue.
Boeing has an issue where its radio altimeters are affected by C-band 5G transmissions. I believe maybe the pilots were relying more on the precision of the altimeter because their vision was impaired due to the bad weather? The whole 'turn off phones' instruction could be because people would follow the unusual request to turn off their phones instead of just telling them to put it in airplane mode (which is so common that some people just don't bother)
Whether electronic devices inside the plane are such problem I don't know.
The fact that aircraft systems are sensitive to frequencies outside their allocation is ridiculous. If literally anyone else was camping on frequency bands they didn't have the rights to the various regulatory bodies would be up in arms.
As a private pilot and software engineer interested in spectrum policy, I’ve been following this closely for years as it’s wound it’s way through the FAA. I have yet to see any convincing, reproducible evidence that any radio altimeters that are operating within specification (filtering out all signal below 4.2 GHz) have malfunctioned due to interference from 5G cellular signals. The one thing the FAA and airline industry claim as evidence is a study by an industry group (Radio Technical Committee for Aeronautics), whose members include radio altimeter manufacturers who would benefit from large retrofits/upgrades. The RTCA didn’t actually do any of their own testing, they received aggregated data from AVSI, a Texas A&M aerospace research group, which had done a study in 2019 on radio altimeters interference. In 2020 the FCC determined that AVSI study “does not demonstrate that harmful interference would likely result under reasonable scenarios (or even reasonably 'foreseeable' scenarios to use the parlance of AVSI)”. Then, two years later when the FAA went to the NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration), which is the agency tasked with managing federal spectrum and agency spectrum disputes, and demanded they stop the FCC from letting carriers turn on networks in the C-band, the NTIA refused because its own technical experts had already evaluated the technical data that RTCA used as evidence that any 5G use of 3.7 GHz - 3.98 GHz band would cause interference severe enough to cause a catastrophic crash resulting hull loss.
Also, when this whole fiasco unfolded neither Verizon or AT&T had spectrum even close to the radio altimeters band. Of the C-band spectrum (3.7 GHz to 3.98 GHz) that was auctioned off a few years ago, only Block A which is between 3.7 GHz and 3.8 GHz was being used. So in addition to the existing, and potentially larger than technically required, 220 MHz guard band between 4.2 GHz (where radio altimeters start) and 3.98 GHz, when the airlines were threatening to cancel service to the US and the FAA was waging a PR war against the FCC the spectrum in question was 3.7 GHz - 3.8 GHz. Even if Verizon and AT&T rolled out 100% of the 5G spectrum they had the ability to use in 2021, it would have meant 5G cell service was within 400 MHz of the radio altimeter spectrum. The entire allocated band for radio altimeters is only 200 MHz (4.2 GHz - 4.4 GHz). Additionally, other countries like Japan have cellular providers operating in 4.0 GHz - 4.1 GHz. Japanese aviation officials (unlike the FAA) actually configured different types of 5G equipment and radio altimeters and tested them, including to see the minimum guard band needed. They found 60 MHz was the minimum guard band needed and therefore the “standard” 100 MHz guard band would be fine. They also found you shouldn’t install 5G towers directly below the approach path of an airport, but that even high powered 5G base stations won’t interfere with radio altimeters if they are 200m away.
I think by far the most comprehensive explainer for this whole saga is by Harold Feld of public knowledge, which if you’re not familiar is a nonprofit advocating for an open internet which includes white papers and FCC testimony on spectrum policy they view as beneficial the public, such as allocating more of the federal government, specifically the military’s, huge bands of essentially unused spectrum. It’s on his personal blog. https://wetmachine.com/tales-of-the-sausage-factory/what-the...
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I'm probably being a simpleton, but this sounds like inadequate firmware to me. At the very least: Airtags have GPS, so shut them off when they are at $ALTITUDE.
You turn it off at $ALTITUDE. When do you turn them on ? There's no button and it is powered off.
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There was never any risk. Someone wrote an article in the times suggesting "perhaps" and people freaked out.
There has never been a single instance or study to support this claim. The entire idea airplane mode is a farce.
I was in university once doing a signal interference lab: we had set up an circuit and we're trying to induce current in it from another circuit. Suddenly the oscilloscope on the receiving end showed a couple of wild spikes, and I received a text message on my trusty Nokia 1611: apparently 900 MHz was in the sweet spot.
Source: This is a lie but sitting behind someone on a plane who gets a call is super annoying.
It’s actually an FCC regulation that requires it, so it’s not a courtesy as you say.
First of all, if you've ever been to an event with hundreds or thousands of people (such as a parade or a rally), you'll notice that even though you have "full bars", your service is degraded beyond usability, and you'll receive text messages hours late.
But in this case, the issue is that people's phones will be trying to connect to many different towers in short succession, as the plane travels.
I don't believe you. Regardless, I have never used airplane mode on an airplane and I never will.
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.
Where now what it might be like is: "Oh no my baggage is lost at XYZ airport at your terminal" and that accountability is somewhat forced now because they can't just say it wasn't found or it is 'in transit' when it really isn't.
Still, it's my stuff, so I'm going to keep putting AirTags in every bag I travel with. I'm sorry, but.. what are they going to do? Ban me from the airline?
You have a point where he may make multiple stops which may include the personal addresses of folks also on your flight. But I can’t imagine you have enough ability to match a person with an address this way.
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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.
Hah, if you're in the United States you should be fine. Federal law forces the airlines to reimburse you, even for just delayed baggage [0].
Last year my bag was delayed a few days on a trip to the mountains. My airline paid the cost to replace all of the clothing and other material in my bag. I think it ended up being ~$2100 worth. I bought items comparable to what I had brought, e.g. a lot of high-quality thermal clothing, some board games, chargers, etc, and I got to keep all of it.
[0]: https://www.transportation.gov/lost-delayed-or-damaged-bagga...
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.
2022 was an anomalous year since the airlines ramped up their schedules without having support staff at the airports to handle it. The statistics seem to indicate a tripling of lost luggage rates.
https://newsrnd.com/business/2022-07-08-travel-chaos--5-000-...
Edit: improved source and removed misleading numbers from previous article
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Enough of a mitigated safety risk that the CR2032 that the AirTag uses is small enough to be exempted from the lithium battery rules.
I land, and before I check my texts I check for my bags.
They have almost always already been reported to the find my network and I have peace of mind.
Even at the baggage carousels. I just activate “Find” and it tells me if my bag is “near by” and rarely it’ll even give me the arrow pointing at my luggage.
I didn’t even realize that I was previously micro-stressing about this stuff. But I can definitely tell the change I’ve had in mental state with an AirTag in my luggage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
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The only update I've gotten is this email two weeks ago, their hotline and website are completely useless. Via DeepL
> Good day,
> We apologize that you have not yet received your luggage and for the inconvenience this has caused. We regret that we are currently unable to meet our standards for a smooth travel experience.
> Why are there delays?
> There are currently massive logistical and personnel failures and bottlenecks worldwide, which are delaying baggage handling in particular. The world of flying is highly interconnected. We are dependent on our global partners here and are thus confronted with numerous challenges.
> We are working hard to ensure that all delayed baggage is delivered within the coming weeks.
> If you would like to check the baggage status yourself, please use the baggage status page only. Our telephone service centers will not be able to assist with any questions regarding your baggage.
> Kind regards
> Your Lufthansa Team
Most airports cut down personnel due to Covid-19 and when the amount of flights quickly ramped up to previous (or possibly higher than before) levels couldn't manage (or did not want) to find/hire/re-hire enough personnel.
When this happens, the luggage is normally stored in a hangar or other warehouse at the airport, far from passenger traffic, and with access reserved to these ground service personnel, so the most you would get with an airtag (if any of the personnel has an iPhone) is that your luggage still exists in a place which you cannot have access to, no way to collect it.
Not just this summer. Europe has been worse than worldwide since at least 2018.
On my phone, turning on airplane mode seems to disable the cell and wifi radios (with wifi able to be toggled back on) but Bluetooth defaults to staying on.
They technically can -— the best kind of can I guess —- but it is not in the spirit of course of ILS interference (@108-112 MHz) with Bluetooth at 2.45 GHz and extremely low range. Hell the pilot is likely to have their iPad with Bluetooth on during all plane operations.
FAA expects to be communicating with mature individuals and entities and not this in their guidelines.
With the same thinking they can ban pacemakers and all cordless headphones, and …breathing. Good luck to Lufthansa. They just declared their baggage handling sucks.
I don't think this move by Lufthansa has much to do with engineering :)
It seems to me they either have to throw away all airtags they find in luggage, or they have to check everyones' phones inside the airplane before they take off, or they're just bluffing.
I have no doubt that they'll do exactly this. They'll likely stick them into an RF-blocking pouch first, then destroy them all. You won't get it back, you won't get any compensation, and they'll point to their policies as to why.
They just don't want people to have proof they've lost their luggage.
For low-power devices that don't turn off, there's DO-160() Section 21 Cat. H evaluation [2]. This is the EU standard for equipment intended for use aboard aircraft. Emissions must be very low for that.
Apple AirTags emit a ultrawideband signal for location, and use low-energy Bluetooth for local communication. Whether that can pass Category H evaluation (the toughest spec, OK next to an antenna) or even Category M evaluation (inside the cabin) is a good question. Not sure about UWB.
[1] https://www.easa.europa.eu/en/the-agency/faqs/cargo-tracking...
[2] https://do160.org/emission-of-radio-frequency-energy/