Delta Air Lines now lets you obsessively track your luggage in real-time
One of the great, anxious mysteries of air travel has always been whether or not your luggage will make it to your destination. Now, one major airline is hoping to curtail that and take the drama out of wondering where, exactly, your bags are.
Delta Air Lines has finally rolled out a promised update to its app that pairs it with the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags that the company started using in April. The airline says it will replace the barcode method of tracking bags at 84 airports that Delta serves.
The big deal with this technology, according to Delta, is that usage of the technology has shown 99.9 percent accuracy in terms of baggage making it to the correct destination. And there are other stop-gaps to ensure this accuracy.
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Belt-loaders across those 84 airports will use a red light/green light system to identify bags that are on the wrong belt. Additionally, when sensors indicate a bag is heading where it shouldn't, the belt will shut down and enable agents to locate and redirect that bag.
And part of the new tracking service's functionality will allow travelers to use the Delta app to track their bags' journey on a map, in an effort to give travelers peace of mind. Previous iterations of the app had a text-based tracking app, but this update gives travelers the ability to physically see the location of their baggage at the airport level.
Later this year, the app will even include push notifications.
It's a welcome innovation for an airline that is sometimes derided online with the quip, "Delta stands for 'Don't expect luggage to arrive.'" (Though the airline has ranked fairly well in recent years when it comes to lost or delayed luggage.)
Bill Lentsch, Delta’s senior vice president of airline operations and airport customer service, said in a press release, "From the moment our customers drop off their bag, we want them to know we’re looking out for it every step of the way and working to take the stress out of flying one innovation at a time.”
It's only a matter of time before flyers start live-tweeting the exact whereabouts of their luggage.
Topics Apps & Software
Marcus Gilmer is Mashable's Assistant Real-Times News Editor on the West Coast, reporting on breaking news from his location in San Francisco. An Alabama native, Marcus earned his BA from Birmingham-Southern College and his MFA in Communications from the University of New Orleans. Marcus has previously worked for Chicagoist, The A.V. Club, the Chicago Sun-Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.
