As travellers prepare for the holiday season, they should be reassured in the knowledge that their luggage will not have done walkies thanks to SITA and Apple partnership has reduced permanently lost bags by 90%.
Good News for Festive Travellers
The winter holidays are one of the busiest times of the year for the aviation industry. Travellers from all around the world in a hurry, airport staff are rushing and sometimes luggage miss its flight or are lost forever in baggage claim.
The collaboration between SITA and Apple stops lost baggage woes are deliver improvements to the checked baggage experience.
By combining Apple technology with SITA’s global aviation infrastructure, the partnership helps airlines act earlier and gives travellers clearer visibility of their luggage during the busies travel period of the year.
Passengers using an Apple AirTag or a Find My network accessory can use Share Item Location to temporarily and securely share their bag’s location with their airline through SITA WorldTracer®. This creates a direct link between the Find My location and airline recovery systems.
AirTagging helps reduce chance of bags becoming ‘truly lost’
From SITA’s analysis, most bags are successfully returned to the passenger but there is a small percentage that are never recovered and become ‘truly lost’.
For bags with an AirTag or Find My network accessory, the number of ‘truly lost’ bags decreased by 90%. This improvement gives passengers a higher chance of being reunited with their bags and reduces costly writer-off for airlines.
Nicole Hogg, Portfolio Director, Baggage at SITA, has said:
“This year has shown the power of working together. When consumer technology and aviation infrastructure are connected in the right way, the results can be transformative. Travelers feel more confident, airlines make better decisions earlier, and the entire recovery process becomes more predictable. This is exactly the kind of shared innovation that moves the industry forward.”
More Airlines Expected to adopt Apple Integration
Airlines using Find My Share Item Location have also seen a 26 % reduction in recovery time of delayed bags, meaning more are returned to passengers sooner.
29 airlines are now using the Apple Find My integration in WorldTracer® as part of their baggage recovery processes, with more airlines expected to adopt it in the coming months.
Global mishandling rates of luggage remain low at 6.3 bags per thousand passengers, and 66% of mishandled bags are reunited with their owners within 48 hours thanks to better data sharing and automation.
The collaboration between Apple and SITA builds on this foundation by adding dynamically updating, passenger-authorised location data to recovery workflows, supporting faster decisions and fewer unresolved cases.
Hoggs adds:
“The first year of this collaboration is also telling us something important about the wider market. Airlines everywhere are looking for ways to manage rising passenger volumes without adding complexity. What we are seeing with Find My Share Item Location is that when passengers choose to share high-quality location data, airlines gain a level of clarity that was not available before. This is helping reduce lost baggage, speed up recovery, and support more resilient operations at a moment when the industry needs it most.”
WorldTracer® is deployed in more than 2,800 airports and used by over 500 airlines and ground handlers worldwide.
With Apple’s integration, the system connects aviation-grade infrastructure with secure consumer technology, helping deliver a smoother and more reliable baggage experience.
