After a painful few years of lost baggage leading to what felt like oceans of tears and eons of heartache, one Aussie airline has finally taken a step towards fixing the problem.
Virgin Australia looks primed and ready to unleash its new bag-tracking tool into the world as soon as August 28.
The system will allow passenger to locate their belongings via the Virgin app.
The passenger will then be sent a bunch of push notifications when their bag passes through key checkpoints such as being checked-in, being transferred to another plane (if on an international journey), and finally, being available for collection at the destination.
The feature will cover approximately 70 per cent of the company’s domestic flights and has been in development for two years, according to the Herald Sun.
If you’re jetting off on a flight leaving from Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Canberra, Hamilton Island, Adelaide, Gold Coast, Ballina, Sunshine Coast, or Launceston, you might be able to test this new feature.
“We know that the potential of lost baggage is a concern for travellers globally and anticipate [the] announcement will give many guests that extra level of comfort knowing where their bag is,” said Virgin’s Paul Jones.
If you’re like me and you’ve been using an Apple Airtag or similar for the past few years, we’d still recommend you hang onto it.
Better to be safe than sorry, right?
However, this Virgin app does symbolise a pretty significant change in behaviour from the Aussie airline industry has, at times, felt like it couldn’t care less about our precious bags.
Remember that time two Qantas baggage handlers threw around luggage like they were WWE wrestlers? We certainly do.
Qantas is supposedly planning to launch a similar feature on its own flights toward the end of 2023.
Fingers crossed more airlines adopt similar systems!
Image credit: izusek via iStock
