The latest wave of “innovation” for Delta Air Lines seems to be less about better products and more about precision tools to extract every last dollar from consumers. Sens. Ruben Gallego, Mark Warner, and Richard Blumenthal warned CEO Ed Bastian in a letter that the carrier’s plan to deploy artificial intelligence for “individualized fares” is surveillance pricing by another name.
The model abandons posted prices for numbers tuned to each traveler’s “willingness to pay,” the point where the wallet flinches but still opens.
Delta intends to roll this system across 20% of its domestic network by year-end, in partnership with Fetcherr. President Glen Hauenstein told investors the “initial results show amazingly favorable unit revenue versus the beta, so we are all in on this.”
Fetcherr CEO Roy Cohen said the quiet part louder: the algorithm trains on “all the data we can get our hands on.” The company’s website dangles up to $4.4 trillion in added aviation profit if the industry follows suit.
The senators’ concern comes from Former FTC Chair Lina Khan’s chilling example years ago: an airline that charges more because it knows a passenger “just had a death in the family and needs to fly across the country.”
Delta claims it will “maintain strict safeguards to ensure compliance with federal law” but has disclosed neither the data sources it will mine nor the guardrails it will honor.
Price discrimination itself is not per se illegal, but discrimination powered by sensitive data can run afoul of unfair or deceptive practice standards. Transportation is also a regulated space and the Department of Transportation can move faster than Congress if it senses political will.
The senators demanded answers by August 4 on scope, data inputs, rollout mechanics, channel differences, and regulatory engagement.
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