Trackers like AirTags are now officially allowed in flight luggage

Trackers such as Apple’s AirTags, Samsung’s SmartTags and, soon, a solution from Google are useful for tracking down lost items. These can be small things like keys, but also big ones like luggage. And this is now legal on air travel.

Smart trackers have been on the market or widespread for about two years. These small, usually coin-sized tracking devices allow objects of all kinds to be tracked down using ultra-broadband technology. Although AirTags land or rather landed in the negative headlines again and again due to (human) abuse, they are extremely practical if you have lost something.

For a long time, these trackers were at best tolerated on board aircraft. It was not a question of privacy or the like, but of concrete security. Because even if the corresponding unit is particularly small, such trackers have a lithium battery – and there are extensive regulations for taking them in passenger luggage.

So far, it has not been clearly clarified how the whole thing behaves in the case of particularly small batteries used in trackers. Accordingly, the airlines also found it difficult to enforce a uniform guideline – last autumn, for example, there was quite a bit of back and forth at Lufthansa.

Luftfahrt-Bundesamt follows ICAO

But now the Luftfahrt-Bundesamt (LBA) has its own guidelines updated, now following the already previously adjusted regulations of the International Civil Aviation Organization ICAO. One of the problems so far has been the fact that such trackers are switched on. For example, a smartphone (with a much larger battery or lithium content of two grams) can be put in the luggage – but only if the device is switched off.

An exception has now been defined with regard to the tracker, as the LBA writes, namely for GPS trackers with lithium-metal batteries with a lithium content of up to 0.3 grams. In addition, lithium-ion batteries have a watt-hour number of 2.7 Wh must not be exceeded.

See also:

Apple, AirTags, AirTag, Apple AirTag
Apple