Airline breaks silence on controversial pricing change

The next time a passenger purchases a plane ticket from Delta Airlines, there’s a good chance that artificial intelligence helped determine how much that person forked over, Knewz.com can report. The airline is so pleased with the results of AI-set dynamic pricing that it’s been using for a small percentage of its sales — a strategy in which a business adjusts prices based on real-time market conditions like supply and demand, competitor pricing and customer behavior — that it’s committing to using AI far more to transform its earnings.

Using AI pricing to sell more tickets

Delta currently uses Fetcherr, an AI pricing platform, for 3 percent of its domestic flights. But by the end of 2025, the airline recently confirmed, it plans to use AI-based revenue management technology across 20 percent of its domestic network — that’s one in five flights. “We like what we see, we like it a lot,” the airline’s president said during an investor call, “and we’re continuing to roll it out.”

Dynamic pricing goes full throttle

The use of AI in dynamic pricing for airline tickets could very well supercharge fare manipulation, one expert has suggested. “Airlines already have a huge team of revenue managers who are looking to see what demand is like in different markets, what days of the week they should raise, when they should lower prices, how fare buckets are selling or not selling, and adjusting prices accordingly,” Clint Henderson of travel site ThePointsGuy.com told Men’s Journal. “So instead of having 10 humans doing pricing, they’ll have a machine doing it for them.”

Lawmakers weigh in

Democrat Senators Ruben Gallego of Arizona, Mark Warner of Virginia and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut have publicly expressed concern over how Delta is using AI to inform its dynamic pricing model. The trio recently shared fears the Atlanta-based airline would use AI to set individual prices that could “likely mean fare price increases up to each individual consumer’s personal ‘pain point,’” they warned.

Delta pushes back

Delta responded to the U.S. senators’ concerns in a letter it shared publicly, insisting the belief it is using or intends to use “AI for ‘individualized’ pricing or ‘surveillance’ pricing, leveraging consumer-specific personal data, such as sensitive personal circumstances or prior purchasing activity to set individualized prices” is misplaced. “There is no fare product Delta has ever used, is testing or plans to use that targets customers with individualized prices based on personal data,” the company wrote, further sharing that Delta has “zero tolerance for discriminatory or predatory pricing.” Delta explained that its “AI-powered pricing functionality” uses aggregated data — not personal data — and “recommends pricing adjustments in both directions to enhance market competitiveness and drive sales, benefiting both our customers and our business.”

Senator reacts

Senator Gallego expressed concern that “Delta is telling their investors one thing, and then turning around and telling the public another.” However, he added, “If Delta is in fact using aggregated instead of individualized data, that is welcome news.”

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