A few days ago, Virgin Australia’s passenger baggage tracking tool went wheels up. In fact, it’s Australia’s first airline to offer baggage tracking, with notifications now live across more than two-thirds of Virgin’s domestic network.
Virgin Australia Chief Customer and Digital Officer, Paul Jones, said that the deployment of baggage tracking was just one of the ways Virgin will deliver on its mission to become Australia’s most loved airline.
“We know the potential of lost baggage is a concern for travellers globally and anticipate today’s announcement will give many guests that extra level of comfort knowing where their bag is at every step of the journey.”
“We are also proud to be able to launch this new feature while having some of the lowest figures in the market when it comes to mishandled or lost bags,” he said.
Keen to see if Virgin Australia’s baggage tracking is any better than their ability to actually serve hot drinks, I took the liberty of testing out the notifications myself. Spoiler alert, it’s about as useful as a screen door on a submarine.
Virgin Australia Launches Baggage Tracking
With digital tracking now part of everyday life, Virgin Australia’s latest instalment hopes to ease the minds of travellers. The system is designed to seamlessly integrate with their existing app, meaning that most of the time, travellers won’t need to complete any extra steps to track their belongings.
The tool runs on a customised offering of Brock Solutions’ SmartSuite platform, which Virgin says has been in development for two years. Despite the implementation of tracking, Virgin Australia already outperforms the industry average for mishandled baggage, at a rate of 1.5 per 1,000 guests, five times better than the last recorded industry average.
Once enabled, a series of push notifications will be sent to your phone, marking key events on your bag’s journey. That includes when your bag is;
- Checked in and has been sorted ready for loading
- Transferred to a connecting Virgin Australia flight
- Transferred to an international partner airline
- Ready for collection, including which carousel to look for
Initially piloted in May 2023, the tracking tool is now available on most domestic flights departing the following airports;
- Melbourne
- Sydney
- Brisbane
- Adelaide
- Gold Coast
- Canberra
- Newcastle
- Ballina Byron
- Sunshine Coast
- Hamilton Island
- Launceston
- Hobart
- Townsville
- Rockhampton
- Mackay
How Do I Track My Bag With Virgin Australia?
Step 1: Download the Virgin Australia app, if you haven’t already done so.
Step 2: Ensure push notifications are enabled.
Step 3: To sync upcoming bookings to the “Trips” page, either log into your Velocity account or manually add your flight via the “Add Trips” button.
From there, you should automatically receive push notifications when the status of your bag changes. You can also manually check on the “Track Bags” section of a specific trip.
Hands-On: Virgin Australia Baggage Tracking
Today I travelled from Hobart to Melbourne to test out Virgin Australia’s heavily publicised bag tracking notifications. As someone who loves planes and flying them, I find this sort of stuff weirdly interesting.
Exactly ten minutes after I watched my precious cargo leave the check-in desk, I received a notification to let me know my bag was on its way.
Although, there was no notification to reassure me that my bag had actually been loaded onto my flight, just that I had checked in a bag. Coincidently, I did in fact know I checked in a bag when I checked it in.
On arrival in Melbourne, the system failed to mention that my bag had arrived. After I had collected my bag and was well on my way into the city, I manually refreshed the Virgin Australia app, and low and behold, it told me that my bag was ready for collection.
Across my entire journey, I received one completely useless notification. But as always, I did have my Apple AirTag working, which let me check that my bag was loaded, unloaded and delivered.
While the implementation of baggage tracking is a welcome improvement, I fail to understand why, after “two years” of development, this is the result. For many, the lack of a notification when a bag is actually loaded onto an aircraft will cause more worry than no tracking at all. Hopefully, Virgin Australia is able to work through these teething issues to reassure its customers that their belongings are being looked after.
