Thanks Keith. That’s very comprehensive and reassuring. 

I’ve also been busy scouring the interverse for AirTag info and as your post also indicates, it does seem that most airlines allow them on / in checked luggage. Lufthansa didn’t like them for a while but has reconsidered. Qantas allows them. 

The more I read about air tags, it seems that they are a cheap form of added travel insurance. I’m going to get a few of them. For my bikes, wallet, keys, passport and luggage. Up to 16 of them can be paired to one Apple ID. 

I’ve seen that same statistic about iPhone vs Android worldwide, but I’ve also seen that Apple has recently exceeded 50% of the smartphone market share in North America. So, I think the usefulness of AirTags might be affected a bit by where you plan to be traveling.

I’m a recent convert to an iPhone after many years of Samsung use. I’d had an iPad for a long time, and was finally lured in by the level of integration between the various Apple devices.

We had been planning to get Air Tags for our bikes since seeing the heaps of luggage in the Vancouver airport when we returned from Fibonacci Scribble last year. The concern was how to securely attach them such that they would still work effectively (so inside a seat post was out). Then, independently, we heard about the Knog Scout, a device built around an Air Tag.  Conveniently, they became available in Canada right around then (Al’s friend had had to order his from Australia). We read the review on dcrainmaker dot com and each got one. 

We are very pleased with them. They attach to the frame under a bottle cage (or without a bottle cage on top, but what cycle tourist would do that?) and do double duty as a bike alarm. When we leave our bikes locked up, we “arm” the alarms through the app on our phones. 

Luckily, we haven’t needed the Scouts to find our missing bikes nor have the alarms gone off. But it was certainly reassuring to know our bikes were in the same airport as us. 

Thanks Jacqui. I was anticipating having to work out an attachment solution but you’ve saved me the research.

Bob there’s probably some major downside to being fully immersed in Apple world but I’m yet to discover it. 

I have found that for travel, including cycle-touring, having an iPhone and min-iPad integrated/linked via the iCloud back-up has significant benefits for managing finances, contacts, photos, communication and navigation.

And the linked portable devices greatly reduce the inconvenience and risk of losing a mobile phone,  and all the subsequent hassles which come with that.

I agree with Graham, if there's a downside to the seamless integration of Apple products I don't know what it is. Can't find my phone? I use my watch to find it. Can't find my watch? I use my phone to find it. Want to know where my keys are? I use either my watch or phone. Same with looking for my laptop. I can copy something to the clipboard on my Mac and paste it onto my phone, and vice versa.

But, to the point of the thread, I have two Air Tags on my bike, one hidden under the water bottle cage and the other buried inside my toolkit, which is buried at the bottom of my panniers. I also have one in my car so I can find it in a parking lot (this has been incredibly helpful), and in my suitcases. When we were returning from Portugal this Spring, the airlines lost our luggage. We received a text saying they were trying to locate them, but we knew exactly where they were (Munich airport). When our luggage eventually arrived at our small, local airport we went there and picked it up. Interestingly, I kept getting text messages for the next several days telling me they were still trying to find our luggage until I finally let them know we had it. 

There are a number of ways to hide an Air Tag on your bike. Here are some of them:  
https://tinyurl.com/pek4z978
https://tinyurl.com/bdhf9jrn
https://tinyurl.com/2p896k9n
https://tinyurl.com/5atpjfw5
https://tinyurl.com/3prah4yd
https://tinyurl.com/3dzj98k2

Thanks Mark. The forgotten location after parking bikes was an issue for us in Tokyo a few years ago. Some of the bike parking lots were massive. I wish we’d had AirTags then. They’d have saved us a lot of wandering up and down rows of parked bikes looking for ours.

I totally agree, Graham.  I'm one of those fully-immersed Apple product people.  When we travel in Asia I have two iPhones, a MacBook Air and am connected to iCloud.  I like the backup situation this creates.  Every photo I take with one iPhone is transferred to the other and to the MacBook and also to iCloud.  Peace of mind is a most important thing when riding in the middle of nowhere in a foreign land.

I have never even thought about it but my bike computer could very well be run by a CR 2032 battery.  It, and a spare, have gone via checked baggage on planes many times and there has never been an issue with the airlines.  

Good point!  If not CR2032 it might be a CR2025- same idea, different size.