I Landed in Seattle Without My Gun... See How an AirTag Resolved Things! 

7:34 " I just received a call from Dallas, they have the bag at security." 8 seconds later the bag appears. That must be a record travel time from Dallas to Seattle!

I've been a customer service worker before, and I know it's rough, but I have no sympathy for workers who will look you in the face and knowingly lie about where your property is. Airtags are never wrong.

I heard a funny story from one of the National Guard Rifle Team members a few years ago. He was traveling from his western state to Camp Perry Ohio via commercial airline. His issued Service Rifle Match rifle was a genuine GI issue M14 in a long Pelican case. He was watching the baggage handlers load baggage in the plane. He saw one of the baggage handlers pull his rifle case out of the cart, look at it, and surreptitiously place it on a tug instead of inside the cargo hold. The soldier quickly reported this to an airport police officer, describing the baggage man and the tug number. He also pointed out that the cop should call the FBI and BATF immediately. First because that weapon was US government property. Secondly, a military M14 is apparently classified as a machine gun by BATF, even if the full automatic parts aren’t installed. So this baggage man was stealing government property and illegally possessing a Class 4 machine gun. The bag handler was promptly arrested. And awarded a lengthy sentence at Club Fed.

airport security ... two words that still don't go together. Confiscating your nail clippers and putting your actually dangerous luggage where ever they feel like it.

I moved coast to coast a few years ago, mostly shipped everything I needed. Airtags were cheap enough that I dropped one in every box I shipped. When I received them at my new home I noticed the one with a computer and PS4 was missing, but UPS tracking had said Delivered. The airtag showed it on the truck. After calling customer serivce and telling them where it was, they called the driver and they finally delivered it....with the shipping label torn off. And you know what...they can't scan it to mark as delivered with the label torn off, which means they scanned it and THEN removed the label.

I'd get 100 airtags yesterday if they let non-iOS users set up and track the damned things. I hate the closed garden approach. I also don't really know many people with iPhones so that's less of an option.

They're usually $75 for four on Amazon. They're also extremely useful with wheelchairs and airlines. Remember when American Airlines "forgot" to load my wheelchair onto my flight home from Defcon?

Flying Southwest to New Orleans. Bit of a mix up on our end. So our bags got on our flight but we didn't. Had to fly next one out about an hour later. Get to New Orleans, have to go to bagge office since it was pulled aside since we weren't there to get it. Her bag is there, car seat is there, my bag with firearm isn't. "Oh we're so sorry we'll look for it. Here is a number to call." My response was, "Well it contains a firearm so I will be contacting NOPD and the ATF. Can I have your name please?" My suitcase turned up within 5 minutes.

Just sitting along a random wall, not scanned in arriving on a baggage claim, at SEA? Where have I heard that before? Oh right, happened to me last Christmas. Only reason I found my bag was because I almost tripped over it sitting next to a baggage claim. Went to tell Alaska's baggage office and they said "well, there's nothing we can do about that". Great sense of responsibility, folks.

I travel with secure items in a pelican case for work. I found that a locked pelican case is a cheat code to meet all the cop dogs in the airport.

Keep in mind, the battery in these only lasts about a year before needing to be replaced. It's easy enough to do, but you'll definitely want a calendar reminder.

I used to carry 74.5 lbs of tools, 1/2 lb under max weight back then . From Seattle to the east coast, luggage shows up, no tools. Later that night I picked up my tool box, didn’t check til the morning. Someone cleared out most of my tools. Had to file w/ FBI cause interstate, I filed a claim, wasn’t the usual missing bag 150 dollar max claim of course I may have padded the loss claim, just cause of inconvenience. Sea to Chi, again no tool box, direct flight. I demanded a supervisor, (pre Karen), I called United in Seattle, no clue. Chi agents said my tool box was delayed. I asked, simply, how the heck do you know this? Supervisor shows up, I show him my premium executive card, stating I fly almost every week. I want my damn tool box, it’s literally 8000 dollars in tools and special equipment. He said wait until the next flight. I objected, demanded they search for my bag so it doesn’t get stolen. If my belongings are “lost”, I will file a stolen report with the FBI, bill United for my time and return flight, since I cannot work without my gear. Thirdly, I will give away all my 20+ round trip tickets away to a foundation that will use them, and 4th, I will not fly on UA anymore. He left angry, about 20 minutes later he came out, dropped my tool box down in the floor and went back to wherever the f he hides all day. No apology or anything. Pretty sure he had to take some “Doans” pills and some Ben gay on his shoulder from carrying my shit from wherever they hide shit to steal.

I AirTag all my gun cases/bags. I also never use non-gun specific bags for gun things to avoid the nightmare in recent news of having a few stray rounds in your bag becoming a prison sentence.

Another firearm misadventure! FYI - Flipper Zero can now be part of the air tag network, maybe keep a backup flipper with your firearm?😅

As someone who works in the midsize suburban library in a consortium where every piece of inventory that circulates has an RFID tag with a unique barcode number, I can attest that we still have to have multiple people running different levels of reports on items that have gone missing in transit from point A to point B. Sometimes they've been checked in at the wrong location because somebody has a terminal open to both the inside shelves and the drive up-which are technically separate locations even though they're around the corner from each other-and the item thinks it's one place when it's another. Sometimes It accidentally got routed to the wrong place and is bouncing back. Sometimes it got to exactly the correct location but never got scammed in there so the system still thinks it's in transit. Sometimes it just gets lost in the sorting facility and we never see it again. All that being said, anything even vaguely valuable is kept in a locked cabinet and has to be picked up and returned at the service desk by that cabinet and not the open hold shelves and rarely gets routed to other locations (and then only between our main and branch location via our own employee courier, not the consortium libraries via the sorting facility and delivery trucks). Some things should not be left to ordinary handling procedures.

The "Hello doggo" moment made me burst in laughter! Wasn't expecting it, but kind of anticipated it, just not so off the cusp and resume like nothing.

incredible... they SCREAM about "did you pack you bag" ... "have you been in attendance to your bag the whole time" ... but they can't even keep track of their stuff and then they leave it unattended... - sidenote: saw a news article about parents puttign airtags in their kids shoes...

I fly routinely for work (not with guns though) and I've got tags in EVERYTHING. I left Adelaide for New South Wales a few weeks ago and my baggage didn't end up in my plane. It ended up on an earlier plane - I watched it land 20 minutes before I did - yet I still waited for my bags for 15 minutes at the carousel.

Damn useful device, if only Apple would actually follow through on opening up their protocols...

I have a suggestion, maybe take a picture of your bag before the flight. Saves describing it at the desk.

I was at the same convention you attended in Tulsa (we met at the end of Lance's class). I was also flying with a firearm, and tagged it with the Samsung equivalent tracker. My flights were drama-free, but you better believe I was checking the app during the layover. Never traveling without trackers again, including my carry-on. You never know when things grow legs.

I was going to buy an airtag for my pelican case, but you can't even activate them without an apple device.

As a network engineer for a small Airport...you have no idea. I don't want to give away too much information, but many of the systems I have seen are one-off programs by defunct companies, and there is a lot of ambiguity as to who owns them (Airport/Airline/TSA).

You should paint your case bright pink with bright green spots. That should be pretty easy to notice and describe to the personnel.

Working in the Airport Software Industry... bagtags ARE universal. All bags, after being tagged, have this tag sent up to SITA, who then distribute the info associated with that tag (flight, your name, security clearance state, etc etc) to where it needs to go. The problem is that airlines don't have access to the systems of the other airports and airlines. If this happens again, tell them (the airline) to raise a ticket with SITA or the airport's BRS (Baggage Reconciliation System) provider, give them the tag, and they WILL be able to find it. Source - Have to do this kind of thing aaaall the time.

When I was in the military I flew home to buy my first Glock. Same story as you, only it was locked in a pistol case in a large heavily modified alice pack, sitting outside the baggage claim office unattended. I'm still pissed about it a dozen or so years later.

The face of that dude (the guy that looking for golf club) quickly turned when you mentioned firearms. :)

The problem is of all the things that are standardized in aviation, luggage tags are not. The luggage tag they put on checked bags only has one purpose - to get your bag to your flight *at that airport*. Thank capitalism, but every airport uses a different system for handling baggage, such that the only thing that's actually standardized on a tag is the departure, destination and flight number. You would think someone might have come up with a universal tracking thing like how you can track mail around the world, but nope, it's all non-standard. The only reason it works is when baggage is offloaded from a flight, it all goes to the same carousel. Of course, lost baggage gets loaded and unloaded off flights, so it takes manual intervention at each airport for someone to collect all the uncollected baggage and figure out if they were on the flight or if it's to forward a bag onto another plane for the journey towards you. In other words, lost baggage turns into a very manual routing process. Of course, imagine if there was a universal barcode tracking system - sure, maybe we can only get updates every 12 hours, but that means unclaimed baggage could be collected, then shoved into a scanner that reads the barcodes and figures out if it's a passenger that was on the flight, lost baggage, or other thing and then somehow figure out how to route it to the owner. And all someone has to do is take unclaimed baggage and put it through a scanner. The problem is, it creates a job, which costs money, and tracking bags you'd think with the checked baggage fees they could pay for, but nope. It gets in the way of profit.

I can't wait for the Android equivalents to be competitive and widely available, my understanding is they were waiting on Apple to complete their part of the anti-stalking cross-compatibility before launching them. Chipolo, Pebblebee & Eufy are the only three I know of so far.

it baffles me that someone's luggage can end up in a different city than the passenger

I inserted an airtag inside my dog's harness the very moment they were available. Make sure to wrap the tag in strech film or put it in small ziplock bag incase the dog uses new gained freedom for some puddle dives. Mine accidentally went in the washing machine and came out perfectly fine thanks to puddle proofing.

I got off of a flight last year in a large, international airport, to see (what seemed to me) an entire flight's worth of luggage lined against a wall, unsupervised. Thankfully, my bag arrived on time, unharmed. But it really does make you wonder what on earth is going on back there. Just awful

Here's a tip. When you're not traveling, put one of those AirTags in your vehicle. The battery is aging anyway, so you may has well have it do something useful. You'll be able to find your car in a parking lot, track it when it's stolen, etc.

Drive by doggo looking for his bag too

Airtag, I'm sold. Crappy customer service must be exposed. Thanks for sharing your experience.

behind the beard view is an interesting videography choice.

I had roughly the same thing happened to me with alaska airlines. On a flight from Phoenix to Seattle they couldn't seem to find my rifle case. Thank goodness for the air tag. You would think that with all the barcodes and information that's stored on that luggage ticket that it would somehow identify as a firearm and need to be handled with added security. With all the hoops, we have to jump through in order to fly with a firearm you think that the airline industry would need to be just as responsible.

My compliments on remaining cool and polite through all that. Good job. Too many would lose their composure and be yelling and swearing at the customer service folks.

I've had this happen and you used to be able to call the ATF and report it stolen at the airport and they would come shutdown the airport if it didn't re-appear quickly.

1, One of the reason I love this guy is that he stopped to acknowledge the doggos. 2, 100% agree, You have stand there and be visible before you get stuff done at times. Had that happen also in SeaTac, However it was the airline I was using at the time's fault due to short connection time (running from one side of the terminal in Vegas to the other isn't exactly a fun time), the bigger one was in London where they insisted my baggage was accidently on a flight to the Middle East a whole baggage container worth of bags, not just mine. Nope it was on a vehicle at the cargo side of the airport. Was eventually brought back to us all. 20 pissed off people made them get on it and get it found. 3, I also have airtags (also as an Android user). Have one right behind me in my backpack that I carry every day. 4, honestly these days I try where I can to only have carry on luggage, less BS at the destination because by that time I either want to get to my hotel or need to be somewhere. Thanks for the video Sir, appreciate it.

Aviation systems run on mainframes that are from the era when jet airplanes are a novelty. Any innovation in these systems happens when they can find another COBOL programmer that is not yet rotting in the ground.

Never seen a better air tag ad in my life. Dum simple

You have more patience than me after the second go around I would have been filing a police report and demanding to speak to the head of security for that airline on sight.

I'll admit, that's the first time I've heard the "Oh, someone put another tag on it" excuse! I can see how that would utterly confuse things. And it's true that there are often multiple barcode stickers on a bag, so one from a previous flight/segment might have been on it (I carefully check for this).

I really dislike Alaska - massive run arounds, no refunds, lost luggage, very poorly run overall. Glad everything worked out for you.

This happened to me, too, in Seattle about two years ago flying on Alaska. My case with sidearm was left sitting in the open along a wall at an unmanned luggage office. I didn't have an AirTag in it, but I walked back and forth between the various luggage offices until I found it after about three hours of waiting for it... I am buying AirTags!!

You'd think a universal baggage tracking system would be a hole in the market that a company could fill, but that would require the airline banks to care about customers

I fly with firearms. I'm 100% adding air tags to the cases. I've long known how incompetent they are, but you actually have a solution. Thanks for posting!

Also incredibly handy to put on pets collar's. The cr2032 battery lasts for literal years in those things.

So, the Andriod option for this is usually Tile. Which so far I've been very happy with. A trip in January, SEA to Florida, was our first using them. One thing to be aware of is they connect via bluetooth to other people's cell phone and report the location those cell phone report, which isn't always correct. I figured this out when we'd taken off and lugage that should have been with us while we were on the plane showed a history of being with us in the airport, then moving around the airport, then suddenly in another nearby town's residential area. And then no changes. This was for hours while we were in the air (I did not share this information with my wife, who's bag it was since I didn't need to panic her until we could do something.) Once we landed, the tag finally refeshed it's location showing that it was in Florida and we were able to pick it up were we expected to. But, for hours it showed as being in a location it never was. I'm sure the last bagage handler to handle that bag lived in that residential area, and their phone hadn't updated it's location (might have had GPS turned off). So, technology is great. Love to use it as a tool, but don't always trust it to tell you the truth.

This man is a national treasure. Your trials and tribulations help educate thousands and thousands of people.

My experience at Sea-tac was different. Checking in with tsa was my problem. The agent tried her best to tear my case open (she failed). She then stated she could get my gun if she wanted to. I have been using this case for 25 years without problem. So the agent calls someone and says she has a gun on the terminal floor. I am expecting SWAT to respond. A supervisor showed up, said the case was fine as is. But she did find the loose round inside. She seized it as a hazardous material. Told me not to do it again. She also asked the first girl why SHE did not find that round.

Well done for putting up with that and remaining polite but firm.

I agree, I find it unreal how they can't know where a bag is with such a unique identifier and a system of scanning it everywhere it goes.

For non Apple users, have a look at tags for pets. You'll also need a dedicated SIM. Call the thing and you get an SMS with coordinates and a maps link. Not as convenient, but accurate to a few meters. They are also easy to modify, allowing installation into e-bikes etc.

Having worked at Sea-Tac International I’m willing to bet they play the shell game in order to misdirect long enough to make it an insurance “lost” claim so that the criminals can obtain an FFL regulated item. Has anyone set precedence in a lawsuit against airlines regarding firearms? That wide eye moment…

The older I get, the funnier it is to watch stuff like this. “Dev yells at phone in parking garage”… hahaha. Or for a different meme reference, “Those kids would be very upset if they could read bag tags.” 😂 You’re going to make a great grumpy old man in another twenty years, Dev. And the kids will wonder how you got that way. Hahaha. Just remember the bag folk didn’t make enough in that hour to buy an AirTag. Been there done that, multiple lives ago. For Continental. Remember them?

I've been flying on Alaska airlines a couple times a year for about a decade. Only had one instance where luggage didn't arrive on the carousel within the 20 minutes.

Yep just got Tile for Android tags since my last trip and have them in all my bags gun or not. Lost luggage is frustrating and even worse with firearms involved. I also take a picture of my bag at the airport before flying or checking if I have to in case it gets lost. A bright strap also helps be more identifiable and help hold it together should a zipper let go or if not closed well after a bag inspection.

Great job at being persistent!! I know that most people who work at the airline counters feel like they are underpaid employees so they have little incentive to do more work than they absolutely have to. (Please note that I said most, not all.) Thankfully I have purchased AirTags so the next time I fly, I will definitely be using them especially if I have some valuables that I can’t afford to lose.

As a former pilot for AAG. I can confirm that they leave entire carts of bags in locations, never update the central tracking system, and never update the cart location tag. Luckily for that example I got out of the flight deck walked over to the cart and looked at the tags. They were all supposed to go on the flight I was flying but the third party inter air baggage company employees didn’t care. Luckily the bags made it on because I found a solution, but that isn’t always possible.

I don't understand why airports have not integrated RFID tags into baggage tags so they can have AirTag-esque dynamig bag tracking in their app.. You book your ticket with Sandpiper Air, arrive at the airport and Fay slapps an RFID tag on/in your bag. The tag is automatically paired to the Sandpiper App. Every inch of the airport has readers that ping your bag every few minutes, or when it detects that it has moved between readers. A scanner at the cargo door scans every bag the moment it enters the plane and Lowell yeets it inside. Once you land, you know the instant the bag leaves the plane and which tug and trailer it is on. Instead of huddling around the baggage carousel waiting for your bag to drop, you can stand at a comfortable distance away awaiting a ping the moment your bag clears the chute. Once your bag leaves the airport door, the tag is deactivated, removed from your app and can be discarded. Frequent flyers could even have their own personalized reusable tag like the ones Princess Cruise Lines Ocean Medallion. They look, essentially, like an air tag with customizable graphics in the center and engraved with your name and cruise info. If cruise lines can integrate them, there is no reason airports and airlines should not.

I had a very similar experience coming back from Mexico 2 weeks ago, except my bag with the Airtag in it, did not arrive with me in Atlanta. It went to Mexico City. I was able to tell the Aeromexico employees exactly where it was, but all they could do was leave a note on the lost-bag claim. Once it arrived in Atlanta, the airline still had no knowledge of it. I had to drive to the airport, and physically go to the area where it showed my bag was located (which was with a different airline altogether). After pleading with the employee, he finally went and looked in the back and located my bag.

This reminds me of something my grandma taught me. There's ducks, and there's eagles. Ducks sit around in the duck pond quacking away doing minimal effort. Eagles soar above and beyond. I strive to be an eagle in everything I do for my customers.

Airtag as a service app on android is actually a valid idea (with multiple foreseeable problems down the road, but it's doable for an indeterminate amount of time) lol

Deev + shenanigans = great video content! Keep up the great work.

We flew from Jamaica back to the US over 20 years ago with a large group from our church (35+ people). We'd arrived at the Jamaica airport almost 4 hours early so there would be plenty of time to get such a large group checked in and through security. They shoved most of our bags on a flight that was leaving within an hour of when we arrived at the airport. We landed at our final destination to about half of our group not being able to find their luggage at baggage claim. Turns out it had arrived on a direct flight (while we'd had a layover in Charlotte), landed almost 6 hours before us, and had been locked in the unclaimed luggage room after spending a significant amount of time riding around on the baggage carousels. We were told the office was closed (it was nearly 11pm when we landed) and we could come back to the airport tomorrow to claim our luggage. We put up such a huge fuss because NONE of this was our fault that they finally found someone with keys to open the room and let 20+ of us claim our bags.

Penair (Peninsula Airways in Alaska) was going to ship my gun in checked baggage without the special tags to make me show ID to claim it at destination. They simply placed it with the other luggage. After I saw them do this, I got back in line and made them do their job.

Looking forward to when the air tag protocol is more universal and better supported on Android as proposed and agreed upon.

5:42 When you paint your pelican case, please let us know how that goes. Or perhaps pink polka dots decals. Anything that stands tF out.

The amount of times this happens to you, shows that this can happen to anyone, more than once. Thank you so much for these videos.

Yeah, you handled that much better than I would have!

Might actually be worth getting something like iPhone SE as a backup phone for travel (not a bad idea to have one) just to have access to AirTag ecosystem.

My brother gave me three air tags last year but I’ve yet to use them. Lost luggage has always been a massive fear of mine because I’m typically over seas from two weeks to two months sometimes. I’ve been lucky every time that it has always showed up every time I have landed at my destination but I think I’m going to start using those Air Tags in my luggage if I go anywhere in the future

You have more patients than me! I would have been disgruntled far sooner then you. Then again I try not to check luggage…

I remember I checked my seabag, and it never showed up on the baggage claim. Turned out it was just sitting in the unclaimed baggage area, even though I had JUST landed like 5 minutes before I got to baggage claim.

Deviant there are similar tags that work with android phones as well. A couple of years ago I was doing a lot of travelling for work and I packed them in all of my luggage. The best piece of mind I ever bought.

Most convincing sales pitch for an iphone I've ever seen. They should be paying you. And thanks.

Nice video! This is exactly why I just purchased airtags. See what happens when I fry the end of the month.

I did the airbag on my bags. So happy it got to me

If your case has the pull out handle and wheels a dozen screws on the back and you can hide it in the handle compartment making it much harder to find. Could add a second one in the soft case with the gun itself maybe velcro a slit into the edge of the lining somewhere. So the open and likely leave with the gun in the soft case allowing a second means of tracking if they separate it from the pelican. I also rebadged my pelican so it looks like a knockoff. The stickers come right off and a little solvent to get rid of glue and you’re a little more subtle.

You sound a lot like a podcaster I used to listen to. I'm not quite sure how you wound up in my feed, but I enjoyed the video. I'll be seriously considering one of these devices should I fly in the future. I had in the past, but I'm an Android user and the last I had looked Samsung had yet to catch up to what the Apple Airtag was capable of. They seem to be there now.

I hate when people try to BS against an AirTag. I'm glad I didn't have any of that when I was flying home from the east coast. I'm glad your luggage issue was resolved relatively quickly.

Thank you for holding their feet to the fire and then creating a video we can share. Share 1) to help friends, family and strangers know the issues have not gotten better. With all the computers, robots and now A.I. it should be better. 2) To put pressure on airlines to improve. Granted lost luggage is not a big expense nor a big money maker for the air lines. Hope this helps.

United lost my checked firearm on a direct flight. This was before AirTags. They had no clue for where it was for over 12 hours and I didn't have it back for nearly 24 hours. At that point I bought an iTraq, which was a predecessor of the AirTags. Instead of relying on a network of phones, the iTraq had a built-in cell phone and motion/drop censors, which really helped with knowing whether it was on my flight or not.

Flight Shenanigans with Deev is my favorite content

I flew from Houston to Boston, Chicago Midway and back to Houston, with an AirTag in my suitcase and pistol case. It gave me a lot of peace of mind.

That was a public service announcement.

Some one was attempting to steal that bag.

Love the advice. Crying inside on the Tulsa dig. Let em know next time you are here and we will make it more fun.

Late 70's I ck'd in 3 long guns, Dayton-SFO. Upon landing I was misdirected hither& yon. On my way to a security office, in a heavily traveled hallway, I spotted my gun cases sitting on the floor, unattended, outside the door of the office. Being angry & frustrated, I simply picked them up & went home. Anyone could have done what I did. There was never an inquiry or follow up from the airline.

This was a rant? No, this was some education by a thoughtful, articulate - and rightfully frustrated - professional. I run AirTags, and, for flatter applications, the RollingSquare AirCard.

In suprised the ATF hasn't showed up first.

never stop exercising your rights, Ollam! i just don't have the fortitude to fly with a firearm checked. i've only done it once and i just went with TSA locks and crossed my fingers and toes that my 380 would make it unmolested (it did). Oddly enough when i last flew with a checked firearm, they told me to make sure the case could not be easily opened and they told me they wanted it sealed with a tamper evident strap along with a TSA lock, and that sealed container had to be locked in my checked bag (again with TSA lock). i just used a steel tamper strap i had laying around and they never even opened my gun case to verify there was actually a gun inside. they just slapped a giant green sticker on the side informing the minions not to open it. of course, this was around 2015 so times have probably changed

yep. there are valid uses for airtags and soon to be released google versions which would be (to some extent) compatible with apple versions after the network standards are ironed out. currently there are samsung versions which are the only alternative i have come across. they aren't as great with coverage because they only operate within the samsung galaxy ecosystem. other than that, a gps tracker running off the cell network is another option but requires a subscription or a bulk pay for a year or two or three depending on the service. sometimes having more than one airtag in the same case or thing you want to track is also helpful because updates can get sporadic. sometimes it can mislead you either by not updating in a timely manner (days even) or give a very rough approximate which can be blocks away. several can give you a consensus while filtering the accuracy and the time it updates.

I've flown into SeaTac with a firearm once, it was a precision rifle in a 4 foot long pelican case with a 'Heavy Baggage' tag, they dropped it on the carousel

@Deviant Just wait a few months. The Android version of Airtag is on preorder because Apple FINALLY implemented the anti stalking feature Google was waiting for. By June we think they will be available in stores as well as online.

I don't recall what airport it was, but it was one of the episodes Mike Rowe did with Dirty Jobs was baggage handling at a major hub. It's a damn MIRACLE anything gets where it's going as often as it does.

Damned right. I don't care if an airline says we can't use them, it's happening.

A few years ago (