Photo: SITA
This holiday season marks a year of collaboration between SITA and Apple in delivering measurable improvements to the checked bag experience. The collaboration helps airlines act earlier and provides passengers with clear visibility of their luggage.
By using an Apple AirTag or a Find My network accessory, passengers can use Share Item Location to temporarily and securely share their bag’s location with their airline through SITA WorldTracer. This creates a link between the Find My location and airline recovery systems.
According to SITA’s analysis, while most bags are successfully returned to the passenger, a small percentage are never recovered and become ‘truly lost.’ For those bags with an AirTag of Find My network accessory, the number of truly lost bags decreased by 90 % when location sharing is enabled through WorldTracer, which is currently deployed at more than 2,800 airports and used by over 500 airlines and ground handlers worldwide.
The integration of Apple’s Find My Share Item Location enables the system to connect aviation-grade infrastructure with secure consumer technology, helping deliver a more reliable baggage experience.
“This year has shown the power of working together,’ said Nicole Hogg, Portfolio Director, Baggage at SITA. “When consumer technology and aviation infrastructure are connected in the right way, the results can be transformative. Travellers 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.”
In addition to the improvements seen by passengers airlines using Find My Share Item Location has also seen a 26% reduction in recovery time of delayed bags. Currently, 29 airlines use the Apple Find My integration in WorldTracer as part of their baggage recovery process, with more airlines expected to adopt it in the coming months.
SITA’s Baggage IT insights report provides important context. Global mishandling rates remain low at 6.3 bags per thousand passengers, and 66 % of mishandled bags are reunited with their owners within 48 hours. The collaboration between Apple and SITA adds dynamically updating, passenger-authorised location data to recovery workflows, supporting faster decisions and fewer unresolved cases.
This combined approach is particularly valuable during holiday peaks when tight connections, winter weather, and heavy transfer volumes can put additional pressure on baggage systems.
“The first year of this collaboration is also telling us something important about the wider market,” added Hogg. “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.”
