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Comment by yosito | Hacker News Reader

Why would an AirTag, or any personal baggage tracker, pose a threat to an airline and make them want to ban it?

The benefits to consumers of using these devices are obvious. But it also seems that enabling customers to know where their lost luggage is would benefit the airlines as well.

Can anyone thing of a reason (legitimate or not) that airlines would be motivated to prevent this?

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Various airline regulatory bodies have rules that prohibit both devices that transmit wireless signals being carried in the cargo hold, as well as devices that have batteries being carried in the cargo hold. AirTags, while probably not the intended targets of such rules, technically fit both of these categories.

The airline is effectively just saying "we follow the rules we are supposed to follow". In practice, I doubt they care at all, and you're not going to see anyone trying to sniff out AirTags to prevent them from being in luggage... but you're also not going to see the official spokesperson of an airline make an announcement saying "yea go ahead and just ignore the rules, it's fine".

Even worse, the response would have been "we ignore these rules that govern our right to fly our planes all the time, don't worry!".

The bottom line is that a lot of literal rules related to electronic devices are arguably broken tens of thousands of times a day. At the same time, airlines also have a generally consistent approach to the things they actually decide to care about which they have almost certainly discussed with regulators.

Yes, and the article touches on this. Accountability. Airlines lose bags all the time and will no longer be able to provide you with the endless list of excuses.

Lufthansa had massive problems with lost luggage lately and people started adding airtags to their bags that led to arrests of some folks, so I guess they want to "protect their reputation".

Ok so if your suitcase is indeed lost - don’t say u had airtag in there. Say you had 200k worth of camera equipment instead…

200k worth of camera equipment, but max refund is like 1600 eur.

So good luck :)

>arrests

source(s)?

Among the 600 comments in the previous mention of this (non) story, there was quite a few mentions of possible reasons (legitimate and not): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33127459

In the average case it changes the balance of power in favor of the customer when there is delayed or missing luggage.

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