How to retrieve your baggage more efficiently

At Cathay, we work hard to ensure your checked baggage reaches you as quickly as possible. In the rare event of a delay, our dedicated team typically retrieves baggage within 24 hours – and we’re now making the process even more efficient with Apple’s Share Item Location feature. 

If you have an AirTag (or third-party accessory that can connect to Apple’s Find My network) in your checked baggage, you’ll now be able to share its location directly with our baggage recovery team. Simply open the Find My app on your Apple iPhone, iPad or Mac, generate a Share Item Location link, and email it to Cathay Pacific’s baggage services team. We’ll add the link to your baggage recovery case file, allowing the team at your arrival airport to locate and retrieve your baggage more swiftly. To protect your privacy, location sharing will automatically end once your baggage is safely returned to you.

Apple’s Share Item Location feature uses Bluetooth wireless technology to detect missing items within the Find My network, a crowdsourced platform of more than one billion Apple devices. The process is end-to-end encrypted and anonymous, so no one can track your item unless you enable location-sharing with them. 

If you’re flying from Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA), there’s an extra level of protection for checked baggage: “All baggage tags generated at HKIA are equipped with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), so if you checked in your suitcase here and it doesn’t make it onto your flight, our baggage services team can pinpoint its location in the airport,” says Cheuk Lo, Cathay Pacific’s General Manager, Airport Service Delivery. 

“However, baggage tags can sometimes be torn off during the sorting process, or you may be travelling via an airport that doesn’t use RFID technology. In such cases, it becomes more difficult for us to locate missing baggage. Previously, we relied solely on the customer’s description. Now, Apple’s Share Item Location feature helps us narrow the search and speed up retrieval.”

Once our team has located the baggage, we typically transport it to your destination on the next available flight. If there are no other flights that day, we may transport the baggage via a different carrier that flies the same route in order to minimise delays.

“On a recent flight from Boston to Hong Kong, we were unable to carry all baggage due to unforeseen circumstances. With no same-day flight available, we arranged for the remaining baggage to be transported to New York, where we had more flights to Hong Kong,” Lo says. “It’s about finding the best available option to ensure our customers receive their baggage as soon as possible.”