DELTA has revealed plans to change ticket pricing for 20% of domestic flights by the end of the year.
The airline’s massive change will leave some customers paying whatever they can afford for a flight after a travel blog recently voted Delta as the “best airline of 2025.”
A fifth of Delta’s flight prices will be determined by artificial intelligence by the end of 2025 (stock image)[/caption]
Delta was voted the best airline of 2025 by The Points Guy (stock image)[/caption]
Delta announced last week that it will use artificial intelligence to influence flight prices for up to two years in a test program, according to travel blog The Points Guy.
“[It’s] a full re-engineering of how we price, and how we will be pricing in the future,” Delta President Glen Hauenstein said about AI-determined pricing during the company’s Investor Day in November.
Hauenstein said the move toward individualized prices aims to “get inside the mind of our consumer and present them something that is relevant to them, at the right time, at the right price.”
In an earnings call on Thursday, Delta said it’ll test out the dynamic pricing model for around 18 to 24 months to see if it’s successful before possibly making it permanent for all flight prices.
Currently, around 3% of the company’s flight prices are determined by AI, while it was just 1% nine months ago.
The long-term strategy comes after TPG named Delta as the best US airline in 2025 for the seventh year in a row.
The travel blog explained their team considered the airline to be the best because of its reliability.
“What put Delta over the top in 2025 was its strength across all the categories we analyzed,” the report said.
“From the consistently strong, on-time airline operation it runs to the experience customers have at the airport and in their seats.”
Now, it will be up to Delta passengers to decide whether the airline’s dependability still stands after their fares are set by computers instead of people.
The pricing will be determined through Delta’s partnership with an Israeli startup called Fetcherr.
The tech calculates prices using AI models that take factors into account like bookings, flight schedules, weather, and the economy, according to TechCrunch.
Fetcherr already works with airlines based outside the US, including Azul, WestJet, and Virgin Atlantic.
Plus, other airlines have secretly followed in Delta’s footsteps and used AI to determine their ticket prices.
What are the arguments against AI?
Artificial intelligence is a highly contested issue, and it seems everyone has a stance on it. Here are some common arguments against it:
Loss of jobs – Some industry experts argue that AI will create new niches in the job market, and as some roles are eliminated, others will appear. However, many artists and writers insist the argument is ethical, as generative AI tools are being trained on their work and wouldn’t function otherwise.
Ethics – When AI is trained on a dataset, much of the content is taken from the Internet. This is almost always, if not exclusively, done without notifying the people whose work is being taken.
Privacy – Content from personal social media accounts may be fed to language models to train them. Concerns have cropped up as Meta unveils its AI assistants across platforms like Facebook and Instagram. There have been legal challenges to this: in 2016, legislation was created to protect personal data in the EU, and similar laws are in the works in the United States.
Misinformation – As AI tools pulls information from the Internet, they may take things out of context or suffer hallucinations that produce nonsensical answers. Tools like Copilot on Bing and Google’s generative AI in search are always at risk of getting things wrong. Some critics argue this could have lethal effects – such as AI prescribing the wrong health information.
Travel industry group ATPCO reported that at least 258 carriers have turned to dynamic pricing technology, according to Travel Weekly.
However, Delta is the first major airline to be so open about using AI pricing, Fortune reported.
“Personalized pricing has been an airline goal for the past decade and a half,” Gary Leff, a travel industry expert, told the outlet.
“Delta is the first major airline to speak so publicly about its use of AI pricing, to tout it for its potential upside at its investor day in the fall and to offer concrete metrics around its use in its recent earnings call.”
Other airlines might be hesitant to go public with their use of AI in pricing due to backlash over the methods.
‘PREDATORY PRICING’
On Tuesday, Democratic Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego slammed Delta’s move as “predatory pricing.”
“Delta’s CEO just got caught bragging about using AI to find your pain point — meaning they’ll squeeze you for every penny,” Gallego wrote on X.
“This isn’t fair pricing or competitive pricing. It’s predatory pricing. I won’t let them get away with this.”
Delta and Fetcherr didn’t immediately return The U.S. Sun’s request for comment.
