After an airline failed to find his lost luggage, a YouTuber used his AirTags to go straight to it in an airport office filled with unclaimed bags.
Apple's AirTags have helped with lost luggage before, and there are plenty of luggage tags now designed to hold them. But for Australian YouTuber Shane Miller, an AirTag not only found his missing bags, it did so despite the airport's baggage carrier, Swissport.
Miller says that the luggage, containing $4,500 worth of cycling equipment, went missing after he flew in to Melbourne Airport on Singapore Airlines. Officials told him his luggage hadn't made the connecting flight, and he would be contacted as soon as it arrived.
Once the bags had arrived at the airport, Miller's AirTags reported their location to him and he expected to hear from the officials. However, Swissport failed to contact him — and he was unable to reach anyone despite many phone calls.
"My beef with Singapore Airlines and their ground handling service Swissport is that there's been no interaction," said Miller. "The number I was provided for Swissport the night I landed I've called 16 times and received no callbacks whatsoever."
"It goes to voicemail and somebody is checking those because the box is emptied every few days," he continued.
Subscribe to AppleInsider on YouTubeMore, Swissport has a website that lists lost luggage — and it was not updated to include his.
After a week of waiting, Miller drove to the airport and used Find My to take him through to the back offices of Swissport. He found his bag, but it wasn't in some lost property room, it had been slung in the corner of a general office.
"Long story short, the guy at oversized baggage really, really helped out on where I needed to go to get the bag," says Miller. "Then the last mile, so to speak, was all 100% the AirTag."
"The office staff were very helpful, taking me to the correct office," he continued. "And I was able to tell I was within a few meters of the bag, and when I was around the corner from where the bag was dumped on one of their office floors, I could make it start beeping."
"So that's my story almost concluded," he said, "but the amount of bags they had on the floor... I am lucky that I got my bag back so easily."
Miller is an IT professional, as well as a cyclist, who reviews cycling accessories such as GPS navigation and trackers. He's previously described the AirTags as "the best bicycle tracker," and featured them on his YouTube channel.
Despite his knowledge of AirTags, it still took Miller a week and, as he says trying "every avenue," to get his bags. Without an AirTag in his equipment luggage, he suspects he may never have got them back.
That is of course exactly what AirTags are intended for, and his isn't the only story of them helping air travellers.
The success of AirTags, though, has led to controversy. Perhaps because Apple, unlike rivals in this field, has been outspoken about anti-stalking features, the effect has been to shine a spotlight on the issues.
It's true, though, that Apple's anti-stalking measures don't appear to be working in every case.
