Nikhil Ravinshankar: Air New Zealand Chief Digital Officer on the airline enabling AirTag location sharing for bag recovery

Travellers with Air New Zealand can now use Apple AirTags to find their lost luggage. 

The carrier is enabling a feature letting customers share the live location of trackers in their baggage with its customer service team. 

It means they can tell airline staff where the bag was last scanned and its most recent location. 

Chief digital officer Nikhil Ravinshankar says it also comes with security safeguards.  

"When a customer shares their AirTag location with us, we get to keep that only for a temporary timeframe - or until the bag gets reunited with a customer."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Just in time for the holidays. Air New Zealand has
found a way to make finding lost luggage a little
bit easier, So they've come out today and said that
travelers who put an Apple ear tag on their bag
can share its location with the airline's customer service team,
so if the bag becomes lost, they'll be able to
view both where it was last scanned at the airport
by the airlines, but also its current location. Nicol Rabashanka

(00:23):
is In New Zealand's chief Digital officer. He's with me
this evening. Nicol, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Hi, Ryan, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
How many bags do you guys lose a day?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
I can tell you in twenty twenty four we mishandled
about six point six percent of bags we transported. We
transport about three point two million bags a year, and
twenty thousand of those were mishandled in twenty twenty four.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
All right, so quite a lot. How until now, how
have you not been able to use people's ear tags?
I mean it must be frustrating for them if they've
got an ear tag on their bag and they can
show it to the customer service rip, and up until
now they've been able to do what nothing with that information?

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Well, if you recall a couple of years ago, we
had that Northern Hemisphere snowstorm and we had the Bag
of Mageddon here in New Zealand. What we did do
for folk who had air tags in their suitcases was
we just borrow their phone and go looking for their bag.
Now we don't obviously have to do that. We have

(01:28):
a much more elegant solution, and that's thanks to sort
of the collaboration with Apple and the work they've done
to allow safe sharing of air tag locations with trusted
third parties like ourselves.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Is that what the hold up's has been security?

Speaker 2 (01:46):
I mean, it's sharing an air tag location when it's
attached to you know, your personal items is a quite
a it's quite a sophisticated solution to manage the private
associated with that. So, for example, when a customer shares
their air tag location with us, we get to keep

(02:08):
that only for a temporary timeframe, so about seven days
or until the bag gets reunited with the customer. So
building that type of infrastructure was going to be critical
to do this safely.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
Do you recommend people get an ear tag then, because like,
how many of your customers, do you reckon actually have them? Now?
Do you get lots of requests for them? For you know,
finding lost bags using your tags.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
It's getting more and more popular, and as the sort
of cost of an air tag drops, and the fact
that now the various civil aviation authorities around the world
are sort of okaying the use of Apple air tags,
we see becoming very popular. So this is a added

(02:57):
peace of mind, if you will, or for custom some
as who are for travelers who want to invest in it,
and we're making sure that you know, we're positioned to
allow them to utilize it the way we've got it
set up now.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Interesting, Nicol, thank you very much for your time in
running us through that. Nicol Ravashenka, who's in New Zealand's
chief digital officer. I mean, ideally they wouldn't lose your
bag in the first place, your beg wouldn't get lost
in the first place. But I guess if it does
then having an ear tag. To be honest, I've never
used an ear tag in my entire life. I don't
even know what couldn't even tell you what they look like,
but I know that people who are terrible with car

(03:32):
keys and wallets find them invaluable. For more from Hither
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