The news running rampart on social media and flight news sites is that Lufthansa has banned Airtags from being active on their flights.
The items have been classified as dangerous goods and can not be transported while activated.
It has been speculated that due to recent baggage issues from Luthansa the airline is taking this approach due to some recent embarrassments with passengers being able to locate lost luggage that the airline was unable to, including one instance where an Airtag led to luggage being found at an airline workers home which led to the employee being charged with theft.
So far the airline has not made any further comment and it seems the social media team may be ahead of themselves and reporting incorrectly. Time will tell if the Airtag will lose it’s functionality of finding lost items, including luggage or if the airline will be able to police the ban at all.
After reading the IATA guide to EBT (Electronic Bag Tagging) it does stipulate that BLE devices should be powered down when checked or contain means to power down when it senses change in altitude.
Quoting from the IATA guide which can be found in full at https://www.iata.org/en/publications/ebt-guide/
for devices carried in or as part of checked baggage there is a requirement that:
1. The PED must have been demonstrated to meet specific electromagnetic radiation standards and the PED must be approved by the operator (airline).
2. The PED must be designed with a minimum of two independent means to turn off completely, turn off cellular or mobile functions, or a combination of both when airborne. These independent methods must use different sources to identify flight. For example, a PED designed to sense rapid altitude changes and acceleration to turn off cellular transmissions is an acceptable design feature that meets the requirement. Redundant sources of the same information, such as two vertical accelerometers, would not be an acceptable design.
This basically means Lufthansa (or any airline) can throw out the guidelines set by the IATA and ban Airtags in checked luggage. Whether they try to enforce it or not is a different story.