Pushchair tracker at the airport: gate-checked and back

Where does a gate-checked pushchair go?

Into the hold, with the luggage. At the aircraft door a handler attaches a tag, the buggy goes down the steps or along the bridge to the ramp, and it is loaded last so it can be unloaded first. It is not screened with your hold bags, it has no barcode linked to your booking in the way a suitcase does, and the paperwork attached to it is usually a single tag with a flight number.

That is the root of the problem: a pushchair is a piece of manually handled cargo with your surname written on a strip of paper.

Will it come back at the door or at the carousel?

Both happen, and which one depends on the airport, the aircraft stand and how busy the ramp is. Some airports return prams to the airbridge within a few minutes of arrival. Others send every oversize item to a separate belt or an oversize door in the reclaim hall, which can be a fifteen-minute walk away with a small child and no wheels.

Ask at the gate before you board, and ask again as you leave the aircraft. If nobody knows, wait five minutes at the door and then head for the oversize belt rather than standing there indefinitely.

What do I do if it does not appear?

1. Do not leave the arrivals hall. Report it at the baggage desk while you are still airside of the final doors, and keep the reference.
2. Say clearly that it was gate-checked, that sends staff to a different pile than a missing suitcase.
3. Ask for a loan buggy or a wheelchair to get to the exit if you have a child who cannot walk it.
4. Photograph the gate tag stub if you were given one; it is the only number in the system.
5. Claim in writing afterwards, within the same deadlines as any other delayed bag.

Where do you put a tracker on a pushchair?

Somewhere padded, hidden, and attached to the frame rather than to a bag that will be unclipped:

• Inside the rolled-up hood, in the pocket most buggies have behind the sun visor.
• Zipped into the underseat basket's inner lining if it has one.
• Cable-tied to the frame tube under the seat, out of a child's reach and out of sight.
• Inside the buggy travel bag, if you use one, as well as on the frame.

Avoid anywhere a child can reach it. It is a small hard disc, and small hard discs go in mouths.

What about the car seat and the travel cot?

Both are handled the same way as the pram if you take them to the gate, and both are worth a thought before you fly. A car seat that arrives late is a car seat you cannot legally strap into a hire car, so it is the item most likely to strand a family in an arrivals hall. If you are only tagging one thing beyond the buggy, tag that. A travel cot usually goes in as ordinary hold luggage, where it rejoins the normal system and the normal odds.

Is a tag safe to use around a child?

A tag on a pushchair is tracking the pushchair, not the child, and that distinction matters. Apple's unwanted-tracking alerts work with Find My accessories, so a tag that ends up travelling with somebody who does not own it will warn their phone, which is the system working as designed. Keep it out of reach, keep the battery door closed, and treat it like any other coin-cell device in a house with small children.

Does it help with the airport itself?

Yes, in a way that is easy to underestimate. Within about 60 m you can make the tag sound at 80–100 dB, which is how you find a folded buggy among fourteen identical folded buggies at an oversize door. Beyond that you get a last known position, updated whenever an Apple device passes it, and an airbridge, a ramp and a reclaim hall are all full of Apple devices.

How Locata Tag travels with a family

A Locata Tag is a small Find My compatible tracker, 36.3 mm square and 9 mm deep at roughly 10 g, which is light enough to cable-tie to a buggy frame without anyone noticing it is there. It is added to Apple's Find My app in about a minute, iPhone or iPad, iOS 14.5 and later, needs no app of ours and no subscription, and reports through the Apple devices around it rather than through any network we operate.

It is IP67 rated, which matters for a pushchair that lives outside in British weather, and the CR2032 inside it runs up to two years before you twist the back off and change it. There is no Ultra Wideband, so no arrow walking you to the exact spot, and none of this works on Android.

Boxes hold two tags and two key rings, the buggy and the changing bag, which are the two things you cannot lose: see the box.