Virgin Australia beats Qantas with baggage tracking app for domestic and international flights

Virgin Australia has beaten Qantas by rolling out a technological tool which lets customers keep track of their baggage throughout a domestic or international journey.

Virgin Australia is expanding its baggage tracking tech to international flights.

Virgin Australia has gone one up on Qantas in the technology stakes, expanding its baggage tracking tool to all domestic and international routes.

After previously only operating on a portion of the airline’s domestic network, the baggage tracker can now be used for any flight, providing peace of mind to customers that their checked luggage is travelling with them.

The tracker works through the Virgin Australia app, sending notifications when bags are checked in, loaded on to aircraft, transferred to a partner airline and available for collection at the final destination.

It’s not quite the same as airtags; ground crews must scan the barcodes on the bags and the information is then sent to the app.

Virgin Australia chief customer and digital officer Paul Jones said the tool was already proving popular having been used more than 1.3 million times since it was first piloted in May last year.

“Australians find comfort in the ability to track food deliveries, postal deliveries, technology, even their heart rate, all via apps, and it made sense for travellers to be able to do the same thing when flying Virgin Australia,” Mr Jones said.

“By further enhancing our Australian-first baggage tracking technology to include all international services and additional notifications, we are giving guests the peace of mind to know where their baggage is at every step of the journey.”

Virgin Australia’s baggage tracking tool requires ground staff to scan bar codes on bags.

He said the tool was part of Virgin Australia’s mission to “provide that extra level of service and care”, along with other enhancements such as “rapid rebook” which allowed guests to self manage their bookings in the event of disruption.

“These advancements work to improve the customer experience and complement our consistently low call-wait times,” Mr Jones said.

“We look forward to continuing to deliver industry leading innovation to ensure our guests have a wonderful travel experience.”

Qantas plans to match the Virgin Australia baggage tracking technology in coming months, after rolling out a similar in-app tool on single-sector flights between 10 destinations late last year.

On average, three to four bags in 1000 are “mishandled” on domestic flights, and about six in 1000 on international services.

The Qantas app provides a link to report missing bags in the event luggage does go astray.

Baggage tracking apps have been in use in the US for many years but have grown in popularity post-Covid, following high rates of baggage gone missing during the travel recovery period.

Outside of the US and Australia, Korean Air, China Eastern and Singapore’s Changi Airport send notifications to customers when bags have been loaded on to flights.