Though some luggage – such as the Olive, the Floatti and the TraxPack – now has integrated location tracking, the vast majority, of course, do not. US airline Delta, however, is making it possible for anyone to track their luggage, no matter how low-tech it may be, using its Fly Delta app.
The app has been available for a few years now and already allowed users to book tickets and add-ons, check-in to flights, keep track of travel plans and check air miles, among other things. Its updated functionality not only provides peace of mind that items checked into the hold are where they're meant to be, but will help users to locate them if they are not.
Delta says it is the first carrier to offer this level of visibility for baggage processing, which has been made possible by the firm's roll-out of RFID scanning technology that started earlier this year. This replaces the manual scanning of barcodes that is typically used for keeping track of checked luggage and allows for the automated scanning of bags as they pass along conveyor belts. The RFID tech is said to be showing a 99.9 percent tracking success rate.
The Fly Delta app now uses the information provided by those RFID scanners to show passengers where their checked luggage was last scanned. Users can pull up a map view within the app that shows pins at each point their luggage has been scanned, which, when clicked, will bring up additional information about the scan. The planned addition of push notifications to the app later this year will mean that users can be updated each time their bag passes a scanning point.
Among the other new features of the app are a newly-combined "Today" and boarding pass screen and electronic boarding passes that now automatically update to show seat, gate and flight information.
Fly Delta 4.0 is available to download now for Android and iOS.
The video below provides an introduction to the new Fly Delta 4.0 app.
Source: Delta
