Southwest Will Finally Let You Track Your Baggage in Real Time
This should definitely be industry standard by now.
Southwest Airlines is now joining the party when it comes to tracking baggage. After the last few years of absolute chaos when it comes to checked luggage, the airline industry has started to make changes so that passengers can track their luggage as they travel. American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines have all already introduced a feature to do this—you can enter your flight information and get live updates on the location of your luggage.
Now, according to reporting from USA Today, Southwest has welcomed its own luggage tracker system. For Southwest passengers, this is particularly exciting because Southwest is one of the few remaining airlines that has a respectable checked bag system. The airline allows customers to check two bags for free—which is great, but also makes the checked bag tracker an even more essential tool for customers.
"Southwest Airlines has introduced the ability for customers to track checked bags throughout their journey—from takeoff to landing," the airline shared in a statement to USA Today. "Now on Southwest.com and the Southwest mobile app, customers can view the status of their checked bag across three different milestones of each checked piece of luggage: confirming when bag tags are printed and when bags are loaded and unloaded from our aircraft."
To use the tool, you can simply click into your reservation and select the option to track your checked bag. As Southwest explained, you’ll only get information about your luggage making it through the three checkpoints of being checked in, loaded onto the plane, and then removed.
For added tracking abilities, a lot of frequent travelers have turned to smart tracking devices like Tiles or Apple Tags. Those tools provide exact location information—so if your bags get lost during a flight transfer or are loaded onto the wrong plane, you'll have more detailed information to work with.
You can check out the new tracking option on Southwest.com.
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