Man in US tracks down missing luggage with AirTag, finds stranger wearing his clothes

After taking a flight from Los Angeles, Mr James Reid waited in vain for his luggage at baggage claim at an airport in Atlanta.

Days later, he recovered his missing luggage on his own.

Mr Reid remembered that he had slipped an Apple AirTag into his luggage, which contained about US$3,000 (S$3,900) worth of items.

“I had it in my luggage, because I just knew that I would probably need it one day, and then luckily it finally came to good use,” he said during an interview with American TV news network Good Morning America on Wednesday.

AirTags are tracking devices that sync wirelessly to mobile phones and tablets to indicate the location of the belongings they are attached to.

According to Good Morning America, Mr Reid tracked his missing luggage with the AirTag app on his iPhone and saw it moving near Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

A couple of days later, Mr Reid reportedly called the local police and was able to tell them the exact location of the luggage. He tracked his luggage until it arrived back at the airport.

American tabloid New York Post reported that Mr Reid then filmed himself confronting the suspected thief, who has been identified as Craig Nelson.

“This silver one here, I have a tracking device in it and I tracked it to you. And you have my shirt on… that’s insane. My shirt and my jeans,” Mr Reid was quoted in the New York Post to have said to Nelson.

After his luggage was recovered, Mr Reid shared a picture of it – and its contents reportedly appeared to have been rummaged through.

The New York Post said Nelson was subsequently charged with theft by taking, unlawful removal of baggage and criminal trespass.

This is not the first time that someone has used an AirTag to track their missing items. In Feburary, a student in Britain used the device to track her stolen car.