United Airlines and Apple AirTags are ready to help reunite you with your lost bags
- United is one of the first to support Apple’s Share Item Location feature
- If your AirTag bag goes missing, Find My can help
- You share that secure URL with United so you can get your bag back faster
If you’re like me, you dread the thought of losing your bag while traveling. That’s why Apple’s announcement to partner with airlines like United to securely share an AirTag’s location was nothing short of incredible. And folks, now your faith is being rewarded… at least by one airline.
United has now integrated Apple’s ‘Share Item Location’ for AirTags and other Find My devices into its system. If your luggage gets lost, you can now share your item locations with United to make the reunion even faster. And hopefully with much less stress.
Thanks to the iOS 18.2 update, which also brought Genmoji and a new Voice Memos feature that Michael Bublé loved, the Items tab in the Find My app has a new submenu.
Under Lost, which is only used if you lose or can’t find an AirTag or other Find My network device, you now have the option to “Share Item Location,” which will generate a URL for sharing.
Let’s say you’re flying United from EWR (Newark Liberty International Airport) to SFO (San Francisco International Airport), and you check a bag with an AirTag in it—which you should always do—but you arrive in sunny California, but you bag ended up somewhere else.
Once you notify United, through a new screen in the app, you can use and paste the URL generated from Share Item Location in Find Me. This way, United’s customer service and operations representative can use the AirTags location to help you find your bag even faster – that’s pretty fantastic.
Additionally, considering that the shared URL shows the AirTag’s location on a map, a timestamp, a radius with appropriate accuracy, its coordinates and updates as it moves within the Find My network, this can be a huge help for a airline like United. in helping get the bag back home.
Ease your privacy concerns
I’ve lost a bag before, and while I was able to send screenshots of my Find My app with the location of my AirTag to United, it wasn’t real-time or easily accessible to the reps I spoke to. Apple has effectively solved that with this new tool. United is doing the integration right here.
Speaking to TechRadar, Lori Augustine, vice president of United Airlines San Francisco Hub, said: “Our strong partnership with Apple on this groundbreaking technology powers every interaction we have to give our customers an experience like never before. United Airlines is driven by the same commitment as the world’s leading technology companies to offer customers world-class products that shape the future.”
Clearly, United recognized that many people already travel with AirTags and see this integration as a win-win for a better customer experience and potentially make operations even more effective. Apple’s Find My network is accurate and includes hundreds of millions of Apple devices such as iPhones and iPads, some of which are operated by United on planes and at airports. United has 120,000 iPhones, iPads and Macs, helping to grow the Find My network in these locations.
Of course, as with the AirTags themselves and the Find My network, privacy is crucial here. So to access the ‘Share Item Location’ a user must authenticate, and United and Apple have worked together to enable easy access with a whitelisted email address. Furthermore, only a limited number of views or logins are allowed on the ‘Share Item Location’; this way the tool is not misused.
Better yet, the Share Item Location link automatically expires after seven days and terminates thanks to proximity alerts when you’re reunited with the bag. United says that less than 1% of its customers’ bags arrive on a later flight, and having an AirTag at home — or another Find My device — can help make that less-than-pleasant experience a little easier.
It’s now live in the United app and the “Share Item Location” is live as long as you’re updated to iOS 18.2 on your iPhone – no update is required for the AirTag itself to use this feature. Furthermore, this is United’s latest technical improvement, and we hope there are more to come. The airline already supports Live Activities on iPhone and Apple Watch, as well as a handy shortcut for dropping off luggage at an airport. Anything to avoid a line, right?
And United’s introduction of accepting Apple’s ‘Share Item Location’ couldn’t have happened sooner as the busy holiday season is almost upon us.
Other airlines will hopefully soon follow, as Apple originally teased Aer Lingus, Air Canada, Air New Zealand, Austrian Airlines, British Airways, Brussels Airlines, Delta Airlines, Eurowings, Iberia, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Lufthansa, Qantas, Singapore Airlines. Swiss International Air Lines, Turkish Airlines, Virgin Atlantic and Vueling in the original announcement.
