The Delta Airlines Airbus A220 plane is preparing to take off at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia on July 10, 2025.
Saul Roeve | AFP | Getty Images
Three democratic senators are pushing Delta's Ed Bastian to answer questions about the airline's planned use of artificial intelligence, set ticket prices and raise concerns about the impact on travelers.
“Delta's current and planned individual pricing practices not only present data privacy concerns, but also means increasing wages to individual consumers' personal “pain” when American families are already struggling with rising costs.”
The senator cited a recent comment from Delta that the airline will partner with AI pricing company Fetcherr by the end of 2025 to deploy AI-based revenue management technology to 20% of its domestic network.
They said Delta executives previously told investors that technology could set fares based on forecasts of “an amount that people are willing to pay for premium products related to base fares.”
The airline said in a statement: “There are no freight products used by Delta. We have tested or used plans to target customers with individual offers based on personal information and more.”
Delta has used dynamic pricing for over 30 years, and pricing fluctuates based on a variety of factors, including overall customer demand, but not personal information for a particular consumer.
According to Delta, dynamic pricing AI technology has been tested to eliminate manual processes while accelerating analytics and adjustments, highlighting that every customer sees the same exact fare and offers across all retail channels.
Delta said it is testing AI to predict demand for a particular route and flight, adapting to market conditions in real time, taking into account thousands of variables simultaneously, and learning from each pricing decision to improve future outcomes.
In January, Senators Blumenthal, Maggie Hassan and Josh Hawley asked Frontier Airlines ULCC.O and Spirit Airlines to disclose whether they were using customer personal information to manipulate seating fees to charge passengers on the same flight differently.
The senator said it appears that the airline will “charge passengers different seat fees for customer personal information on the same flight,” despite the airline having the same fare.
Frontiers and Spirit did not immediately respond to requests for comment on current practices on Tuesday.
