British Airways launches digital bag tags – but do you want one?

It’s taken six years, but British Airways has finally managed to sort out the digital bag tags it was first trialling back in 2013.

The introduction of this technology appears to have had numerous setbacks – including yet again earlier this year, given that British Airways was advertising the new tags in Business Life magazine last December for a January launch.

The technology has been branded ‘TAG by British Airways’.  You can see more on this special page on the BA website here.

You can pre-order a TAG now with an expected delivery date of mid-July.  There is an introductory pricing offer:

£63 until October

£80 thereafter

Both of these are higher than the £60 mentioned in the Business Life ad last December.

What are the benefits?

The main selling point, as British Airways sees it, is that it will save you time when you drop your bag.

Now that British Airways has moved most of its bag drops to self-service counters (for economy passengers at least) you must print your own bag labels.  With the digital bag TAG, however, all you need to do is apply the correct routing to the tag from within the BA mobile app and then send it on its way.

You will, of course, also save on sticky labels although it is probably significantly more energy intensive to manufacture the digital TAG than it is to print on paper …..

Is it worth it?

In short, probably not. £63 – increasing to £80 – seems very expensive for a service that is currently free, and the time you will save by not having to print paper tags is minimal.

If you normally check in two suitcases, of course, then you are looking at £126, riding to £160.  These are not trivial numbers.

Baggage tag printing is not a significant bottle neck in airport departures, unlike the bag drop itself, and unfortunately this new digital TAG does not miraculously drop your bags for you!  I can only see it being a benefit if BA sets up an exclusive Bag Drop desk just for TAG customers.

You also need to remember that Business and First Class passengers – or status passengers using the Business and First Class desks – do not need to pre-print baggage tags.  There is no benefit for these passengers at all.

TAG does NOT have tracking capability.  If it did – allowing you to check via the BA app where your bag was at any particular moment – it would have some added value.  But it doesn’t.

The TAG gets even less compelling when you take a look at the FAQs that British Airways has set up on its TAG page, where you can see that it only works in 63 countries globally.

According to the site, TAG has a usable life of five years before the battery dies which doesn’t seem like a lot, although I accept that the technology will move on quickly anyway.

Additionally, you can’t use the TAG on connecting flights yet (although BA promises this will be part of a “future release”) or other airlines, since it can only be used in conjunction with the British Airways app.

Then, of course, you have to consider how much you trust the technology itself.  How willing are you to trust that the e-ink screen on the TAG doesn’t get smashed in transit, or the battery dies, or the connection to the BA app isn’t lost or tampered with?

TAG by British Airways seems to add needless complexity to a process that is already remarkably reliable.  Thanks to the micro-barcode that is removed from the printed label and stuck directly onto your case, traditional bag tags already have a level of back-up that the digital bag tag will not. Often the simplest solution is also the best solution!

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