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

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• BJ says:

  26 Jun26 June 04:41

  Nope, not me, I haven’t checked a bag this century. BA being BA I would not be surprised if they soon impose new cabin bag restriction in an effort to sell these and raise more cash from checked bags.

  • Paul says:

    26 Jun26 June 06:33

    I got for one welcome significant tightening of cabin baggage rules. It’s ludicrous that on a full flight being able to take you bag is dependent on you boarding priority. Moreover I haven’t flown shorthaul for about years without the message the day before saying I can check my bag for free or had the same offer at the gate, and then giving those that do priority boarding.
    Current baggage allowances are excessive and unsafe.

    • BJ says:

      26 Jun26 June 06:53

      Tend to agree Paul, I always fly business long haul so tend not to see the problem so much. However in Asia I now mostly fly Air Asia and the problem is all too apparent. To avoid it I choose a hot seat at the front of the plane. There is also the safety consideration too, having something fall on you weighing a few kg is bad enough but some of these 55cm bags can be up to 20kg depending the way some people pack. My bag is never that heavy these days, even if I’m away for more than a week I pack for seven days and clothes go to laundry every five days. I prefer this so that I can travel light, even if it means high hotel laundry Bill’s.

    • Andrew says:

      26 Jun26 June 10:37

      Has anyone ever been caught stowing full size hold luggage instead of a cabin bag when they’ve had the “flight is really full” texts?

      I’ve risked it a few times on the Domestics and nobody has said anything.

  • sunguy says:

    26 Jun26 June 10:02

    Hmmm….this is half the problems on aircraft these days….”Havent checked a bag this century”.

    Im happy for you – genuinely….but unless you are flying first or business every single time – domestically and otherwise, its a little self-indulgent and selfish- especially if your ticket includes a checked bag.

    I agree, that waiting at the other end for 20mins is a little pain, but the benefits, such as not having to look after a bag all the way to the aircraft and have to take it through security along with the bun fight over the space in the overhead bins – ever noticed these poor souls in economy who board last because they are in “Group 5” and get stopped at the jet bridge or on the steps and told they cannot bring their bag on because there is now genuinely no space ?

    I am completely astounded by the sheer number of – not bags, but suitcases that are now in the overhead bins – some of it, yes, is the silly fault of the airline charging for hold bags – but the rest, especially those with hold bag allowance …..

    (my little pet peeve – unless you havent realised!).

• David says:

  26 Jun26 June 04:58

  Then consider a bag needing to be re-routed at an outstation. Is the existing tag going to be reliably updated for this? Or blank itself?
  – I can see some baggage reflgiht person removing the tag and putting a new paper one on. Will they put it in your bag?

  Plus if the roll out is anything like the early YEARS of mobile boarding passes, staff will be adding paper tags to complement the e tag.

• Andrew M says:

  26 Jun26 June 05:00

  1 April already? Lol.

• ChrisC says:

  26 Jun26 June 05:21

  The old adage comes to mind – just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do something.

  And to me it doesn’t look too robust standing proud of the case just waiting to be smashed against some hard metal in the baggage handling system.

  Waste of money if you ask me and I await the first ‘BA broke my TAG how much can I get off them’ thread on flyer talk!

• NigelthePensioner says:

  26 Jun26 June 05:54

  Alex Cruz and his baggage handling comrades will have these smashed to pieces within 2 to 3 flights and unless they are made by Briggs and Riley, airline damage will not be included in the guarantee. I would rather use the very reliable backed up paper system that we use already along with an electronic tracking tag that I currently use, just to follow my luggage’s journey and to know when to join the melee of passengers by the entrance to the belt at just the right time……….how did he know??!!

  • Shoestring says:

    26 Jun26 June 06:58

    which goes by the name???

    • PKing says:

      26 Jun26 June 07:22

      I got a ‘GEGO Lugloc GPS Tracker’ from amazon a few months ago and have used it on a few trips.

      It’s not that fast to update with 3G when it arrives at an airport, usually 20-30 minutes, but the bluetooth shows when it gets near the belt.

      After waiting an hour for my luggage to come out at MAN I figured it would be nice to know if it had made it to the right airport in future, so far so good.

      • David says:

        26 Jun26 June 07:26

        “Tile” does this to an extent, just based on bluetooth.

        • JP-MCO says:

          26 Jun26 June 07:49

          I quite like that idea. So with Tile are you able to know when your bag is close to emerging on the baggage belt or is the Bluetooth not strong enough to do that?

        • PKing says:

          26 Jun26 June 08:14

          Bluetooth should be strong enough to tell you the cart has arrived at the other side of the luggage belt, doesn’t tell you how long they will take to unload it 🙂

      • JK says:

        26 Jun26 June 12:28

        I’ve had a GEGO for about a year now. Key advantage over Tile is it also has 3G which works almost everywhere, so if your bag is truly lost then you can see which airport it’s stuck at. Recommend.

      • Graham Walsh says:

        28 Jun28 June 15:16

        I see Vodafone have a similar device, acquired Trackisafe

• John says:

  26 Jun26 June 06:32

  So they are about 3 times the price of the Qantas bag tags which have been around since 2013, but QF gives them out free to status members (I got two), if BA was really interested 5 years ago they could have just made a deal with QF and changed the branding.

• Paul says:

  26 Jun26 June 06:36

  Rip off Britain.
  Overpriced, cant be tracked (AA tracks bags brilliantly on their app) and typical of BA to be late to a party and then turn up under dressed!
  Just avoid

  • TGLoyalty says:

    26 Jun26 June 07:13

    Qatar tells you your luggage ID and if it’s been loaded to the plane and the belt the other side and has done for atleast 18 months.

    Shocking that BA IT can be that far behind.

• Shoestring says:

  26 Jun26 June 06:47

  I don’t think BA would claim to be branding it ‘TAG’, that’s common usage eg the Tamar Bridge TAG.

  cf Toll bridges are among the earliest applications of radio frequency identification technology. The first electronic toll-collection system was deployed in Bergen, Norway, in 1986. A similar solution was taken live in the United States a year or two later, and these systems expanded across Europe and North America during the 1990s.

  Most toll-collection systems employ active RFID transponders. An active tag is affixed to the windshield of a car or truck. It also has a passive transponder. As a car approaches the toll booth, its passive tag receives energy and awakens the active tag, telling it to start emitting a signal (to increase battery life, the active tag remains asleep most of the time). The active tag sends its unique serial number to a reader mounted above the toll booth. That number is associated with a driver, who is billed the amount of the toll.

  • Shoestring says:

    26 Jun26 June 07:23

    Wiki Tags
    A radio-frequency identification system uses tags, or labels attached to the objects to be identified. Two-way radio transmitter-receivers called interrogators or readers send a signal to the tag and read its response.[11]

    RFID tags can be either passive, active or battery-assisted passive. An active tag has an on-board battery and periodically transmits its ID signal. A battery-assisted passive (BAP) has a small battery on board and is activated when in the presence of an RFID reader. A passive tag is cheaper and smaller because it has no battery; instead, the tag uses the radio energy transmitted by the reader. However, to operate a passive tag, it must be illuminated with a power level roughly a thousand times stronger than for signal transmission. That makes a difference in interference and in exposure to radiation.

    Tags may either be read-only, having a factory-assigned serial number that is used as a key into a database, or may be read/write, where object-specific data can be written into the tag by the system user. Field programmable tags may be write-once, read-multiple; “blank” tags may be written with an electronic product code by the user.

    RFID tags contain at least three parts: an integrated circuit that stores and processes information and that modulates and demodulates radio-frequency (RF) signals; a means of collecting DC power from the incident reader signal; and an antenna for receiving and transmitting the signal. The tag information is stored in a non-volatile memory. The RFID tag includes either fixed or programmable logic for processing the transmission and sensor data, respectively.

    An RFID reader transmits an encoded radio signal to interrogate the tag. The RFID tag receives the message and then responds with its identification and other information. This may be only a unique tag serial number, or may be product-related information such as a stock number, lot or batch number, production date, or other specific information. Since tags have individual serial numbers, the RFID system design can discriminate among several tags that might be within the range of the RFID reader and read them simultaneously.

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