Delta Air Lines Airlines Park is located at Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport on April 9, 2025 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Joe Raedle | Getty Images
Delta Air Lines On Friday, they will not use artificial intelligence to set personalized ticket prices for passengers after facing sharp criticism from US lawmakers and widespread public concerns.
Last week, Democrats Reuben Gallego, Mark Warner and Richard Blumental said they believe the Atlanta-based airline will use AI to set individual prices.
Delta has not used AI to personalize pricing, but said it plans to deploy AI-based revenue management technology to 20% of its domestic network by the end of 2025 in a partnership with AI pricing company Fetcherr.
“There are no fares that Delta has used so far. There are no tests or plans to target customers at individual prices based on personal data,” Delta told the senators on Friday in a letter seen by Reuters. “The price of our tickets does not take into account personal data.”
The senator praised Delta's commitment to not using AI for personal pricing, but expressed many questions and would like more details on what data Delta is collecting to set prices.
“Delta is telling investors one thing, then turning around and telling the public another thing,” Gallego said. “If Delta actually uses aggregations instead of individual data, that's welcome news.”
Delta declined to comment on Gallego's statement.
The senator cited a comment from Delta President Glenn Hauenstein in December. The carrier's AI pricing technology said it can set fares based on forecasts of “amounts that people are willing to pay for premium products related to the base fare.”
last week, American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said using AI to set ticket prices could undermine consumer confidence.
“This is not about bait and switching, it's not about tricks,” Isom said in his revenue call.
Democrats Greg Kasar and Rashida Tribe introduced a law last week prohibiting AI to set prices or wages based on American personal data, and airlines specifically banned airlines after seeing a search for family obituaries.
They cited a staff report from the Federal Trade Commission in January. “Retailers often use targeted total prices to set targeted, adjusted prices for goods and services, from person locations and demographics to mouse movements on web pages,” he said.
The FTC cited a hypothetical example of a consumer who was introduced as a new parent who could intentionally show a high-priced baby thermometer and collect behavioral details to predict the state of mind of a customer.
Delta said airlines have used dynamic pricing for over 30 years, with pricing fluctuating based on a variety of factors, including overall customer demand, fuel prices and competition, but not personal information for a particular consumer.
“Given tens of thousands of freight and hundreds of thousands of routes that are sold at any time, we use new ones
Technologies like AI are committed to streamlining the process of analyzing existing data and the speed and scale that can accommodate changing market dynamics,” the Delta letter states.
