Can You Fly With a Find My Tracker or Smart Lock? The Lithium Battery Rules, Explained

Yes — in the rules that actually govern this, a small Find My tracker or a lock with a built-in battery is treated as an ordinary tracking device, not as a dangerous good, and it's allowed in both carry-on and checked luggage. The confusion mostly comes from a different, unrelated story: airlines banning "smart luggage" with a battery built into the suitcase itself, which doesn't describe a separate accessory like a lock, a card, or a wallet tracker clipped or packed onto a normal bag. Here's what the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and aviation authorities actually say, where the real restrictions apply, and what's worth knowing before you fly with a Seekerity product — or any Find My accessory.

Quick answer

• Bag tags and location trackers are explicitly not restricted by battery size. IATA's own passenger guidance states this directly — a small tracker like an AirTag or a Seekerity accessory doesn't fall under the lithium battery limits that apply to power banks, spare batteries, or large electronics.
• The "smart luggage" battery bans are a different issue. Those rules, and the ones airlines introduced in 2018, target a battery built into the structure of a suitcase that can't be taken out — not a separate lock, card, or wallet attached to an ordinary bag.
• Seekerity's trackers use small, built-in rechargeable batteries — similar in scale to a wireless earbud case, not a power bank — and none of them are classified as smart luggage, since none of them are a suitcase.

What the rules actually say about small trackers

The clearest answer comes from IATA's own guidance for passengers travelling with lithium batteries. It sets specific watt-hour (Wh) limits for the batteries people actually worry about — laptops, power banks, spare camera batteries — and then separately addresses the category a Find My tracker falls into: "bag tags and GPS tracking devices are not restricted," with no battery size limit given for them at all. That's a deliberate carve-out, not an oversight: a small, low-power tracker poses a different risk profile than a battery meant to run a laptop for hours, and regulators have treated it that way.

For context on the batteries that are restricted: a device with an installed lithium-ion battery up to 100 Wh can travel in carry-on or checked baggage with no special approval; batteries from 100–160 Wh need the airline's approval; and anything over 160 Wh has to be shipped as cargo. Spare (loose) lithium batteries are stricter — carry-on only, with terminals protected against short-circuiting. A Find My tracker's battery doesn't come close to any of these thresholds, which is exactly why the "bag tags and GPS tracking devices" line exists as a separate, simpler rule rather than forcing every tiny tracker through the same math as a laptop battery.

The "smart luggage" battery ban — and why it's a different story

If you've seen headlines about airlines banning battery-powered luggage, that's a real rule, but it's not about trackers. In late 2017, American Airlines, Delta, and Alaska Airlines announced that "smart luggage" — suitcases with a battery built into the bag itself, often to charge a phone on the go — would only be accepted if the battery could be removed before the bag was checked. Bags without a removable battery, most notably the Bluesmart carry-on, were banned outright from checked baggage starting January 15, 2018. The concern was straightforward: a battery that's permanently sealed inside a suitcase can't be pulled out and kept in the cabin if something goes wrong, which is the standard precaution for lithium batteries in the cargo hold.

IATA's current guidance reflects the same logic with specific numbers: a non-removable battery built into smart luggage is forbidden above 2.7 Wh and 0.3 grams of lithium content. Below that tiny threshold, it's allowed in either carry-on or checked baggage without approval — but above it, if the battery can be removed, you take it out and carry it in the cabin; if it can't be removed, the bag doesn't fly as checked luggage at all.

None of this describes a lock, a cardholder, a wallet, or a tracking card. A Smart Lock clipped onto a normal suitcase zipper is an accessory with its own small battery, not a suitcase with a battery built into its structure — the same distinction that separates an AirTag clipped to a backpack from a backpack that happens to have a battery sewn into the lining. That's why the smart luggage rule, strict as it is, isn't the rule that applies here.

What happened with AirTags and Lufthansa

Some of the lingering uncertainty traces back to 2022, when a Lufthansa social media reply told a customer that devices like AirTags weren't allowed in checked luggage. It spread quickly, but Lufthansa clarified shortly after that it had never issued a ban: its own risk assessment found that trackers with very low battery and transmission power posed no safety issue in checked bags, and the airline said it wanted international aviation bodies to formally exempt low-power trackers from broader lithium battery restrictions — which is effectively the position IATA's "not restricted" guidance already reflects. Around the same time, the US FAA's hazardous materials guidance confirmed that location tracking devices powered by lithium batteries are allowed in both carry-on and checked baggage, and the TSA has never restricted them. An AirTag's coin-cell battery contains about 0.1 grams of lithium metal, comfortably under any limit that could apply.

That history is worth knowing mainly because it explains where the confusion came from — a single unclear customer-service reply, not an actual regulation — rather than because it's an open question today.

How a Seekerity tracker's battery differs from an AirTag's

This is a genuine difference worth being upfront about, not a technicality to gloss over. An AirTag uses a CR2032 coin-cell battery you can pop out and replace yourself in seconds. Seekerity's accessories — the Smart Lock, Smart Tracking Card, Smart Cardholder, both MagSafe wallets, the key organizers, and the Smart Passport Holder — use a small built-in battery that's rechargeable via wireless charging instead, with no coin cell to swap out. That battery isn't designed to be removed by the user at all.

Does that push a Seekerity product toward the "non-removable battery" rule that applies to smart luggage? No — and the reason is scale, not a loophole. The smart luggage rule exists because a suitcase's battery is sized to charge a phone multiple times over, which puts it well above the 2.7 Wh non-removable threshold if it can't be taken out. A tracker battery built to run a small Bluetooth chip and an occasional beep for months on a single charge is a different order of magnitude entirely — the same category IATA's "bag tags and GPS tracking devices are not restricted" line is written for, regardless of whether that specific battery happens to be removable. Seekerity doesn't publish exact watt-hour figures for every product, so treat this as the general picture rather than a specific number — but it's the same basic hardware class as a wireless earbud case or a smartwatch, not a power bank.

Smart luggage vs. a tracker on an ordinary bag: side by side

	Smart suitcase with a built-in battery	Find My tracker (AirTag, Smart Lock, Smart Tracking Card, etc.)
What it is	A battery built into the suitcase structure, often to charge a phone	A small accessory clipped, locked, or packed onto an ordinary bag
Typical battery size	Large enough to charge a phone multiple times — well above 2.7 Wh	Small enough to run a low-power chip for months — a different order of magnitude
Rule that applies	IATA's non-removable smart luggage rule: forbidden above 2.7 Wh / 0.3 g if the battery can't be taken out	IATA's "bag tags and GPS tracking devices are not restricted" guidance — no battery-size limit
Removable battery?	Must be removable above the threshold, or the bag isn't accepted as checked luggage	Not required to be removable — AirTag's coin cell is replaceable; Seekerity's rechargeable batteries aren't, and neither needs to be
Checked baggage status	Banned by several US airlines since January 2018 unless the battery is removed first	Allowed in both carry-on and checked baggage under IATA guidance; TSA and FAA guidance agrees for AirTag-style devices

Sensible habits, beyond what's technically allowed

Being permitted and being the best practical choice aren't always the same thing, so a few habits are worth adopting even though nothing here requires them:

• Charge your tracker before a trip. A Find My accessory that's dead on arrival doesn't help you find anything — check it the way you'd check a phone battery before a flight.
• Keep a note of which bag has which tracker if you're travelling with more than one — the Find My app labels each item individually, so this is about your own memory, not a technical limitation.
• Don't rely on a tracker as your only safeguard for a passport or boarding documents. A Smart Passport Holder helps you find a passport you've set down or left behind — it doesn't replace keeping track of it in the first place, and Find My's location updates depend on nearby Apple devices being in range, so they aren't instant or guaranteed everywhere.
• If an airline employee tells you otherwise, ask for the specific rule. The Lufthansa episode shows that front-line guidance can occasionally be wrong even when the airline's own written policy says otherwise — a polite request to check the policy, rather than an argument, usually resolves it fastest.

Does this change anything about how you use a Smart Lock on checked luggage?

No — a Smart Lock is used exactly like any other combination padlock: attached to your suitcase zipper before check-in, same as it would be with no tracking feature at all. The only difference is that it also reports the bag's last known location through Apple's Find My network and can play a sound once you're close enough to hear it — useful if a bag is delayed, misrouted, or simply slow to appear at the carousel. It doesn't guarantee your bag won't be lost or delayed, and it isn't a theft-prevention device; it's a way to know roughly where a checked bag is instead of waiting at the carousel with no information at all. If you're packing for a trip with a checked bag and a passport or cards you want covered too, the Travel Essentials Kit pairs the lock with the ultra-thin Smart Tracking Card for both in one order.

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