“When you think about what AI does, it allows you to hopefully make better decisions,” he said on Scott McCartney’s “Airlines Confidential” podcast. “And because you have more access to data, more timely, it gives you a clearer perspective of what the opportunities are. And our industry, our company, we have lots of decisions we have to make every day — whether it’s how we’re managing the daily operations or what’s happening in the maintenance realm and with our engines and the history of the engines.”
One particularly consequential part of Delta’s AI strategy is airfare pricing.
Delta has already been testing AI to determine ticket prices, raising a question travelers may soon be asking: Could the price on the screen eventually be determined specifically for you?
Delta is already letting AI help set fares
Airlines have used sophisticated revenue-management systems for decades, so fluctuating airfare prices are nothing new. A seat can become more expensive as a flight fills up, for example, or cheaper when an airline needs to stimulate demand.
What Delta is currently testing takes that concept further, however.
The airline has been working with Fetcherr, an AI pricing company, to help determine fares. In July 2025, Delta said AI was influencing three percent of its fares, with a goal of reaching 20% by the end of that year. Delta President Glen Hauenstein previously described the technology as a “super analyst” capable of working around the clock to determine the appropriate price for a flight at a particular moment.
Hauenstein also described a longer-term vision in which traditional fare-setting and inventory management could merge into what Delta called “offer management” — essentially creating a price available on a particular flight, at a particular time, to a particular customer.
That prospect alarmed consumer advocates and lawmakers. In July 2025, Senators Mark Warner, Ruben Gallego and Richard Blumenthal questioned Delta about whether AI could eventually be used to charge individual customers different prices based on their personal information and willingness to pay.
“Individualized pricing, or surveillance-based price setting, eliminates a fixed or static price in favor of prices that are tailored to an individual consumer’s willingness to pay,” they wrote. “Delta’s current and planned individualized pricing practices not only present data privacy concerns, but will also likely mean fare price increases up to each individual consumer’s personal ‘pain point’ at a time when American families are already struggling with rising costs.”
