AirTags take flight – FAA says they’re fine for finding bags

(Pocket-lint) – After a week of AirTag confusion, the FAA says that people can take them on planes just fine because they don’t pose any danger to flights. This follows a similar conclusion by authorities in Germany. That confusion began when German airline Lufthansa said that people couldn’t take Apple AirTags on flights without turning them off, only to later say that talk of a ban was premature.

We got confirmation later that both Lufthansa and german authorities had concluded that AirTags were fine after all, despite the presence of a minuscule amount of lithium in their batteries – the material causing all the concern in the first place. Now, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has weighed in, saying that “luggage tracking devices powered by lithium metal cells that have 0.3 grams or less of lithium can be used on checked baggage”. For reference, each AirTag contains just 0.1 grams of lithium, well below the FAA’s limit.

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That means that we now have official lines on whether you can use an AirTag to track luggage in both the United States and in Germany, hopefully putting all of this to bed for good.

Why this all matters is the way AirTags have been used on planes so far. An AirTag is an item tracker, built for attaching to keys and wallets and sometimes even pets. That makes them particularly useful when trying to locate lost luggage, something airlines are often equally bad at doing.

There are even lines of luggage with spaces specifically for AirTags, so this latest news will no doubt come as a relief to the companies making those.

Writing by Oliver Haslam.