Imagine this dystopian scenario: You have a death in the family and airlines know from scraping your emails that you’ll be flying to the funeral with no time to shop around.
Your fare? Double what everyone else is paying for the same flight.
That’s not happening today, but it’s the danger former Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan warned about on a podcast in July.
In 2025, airlines are eager to tout how they are using AI for customer service and to manage disruptions.
But AI and pricing? That’s become a third rail.
Delta’s comments on an earnings call in July kicked off the backlash: Delta president Glen Hauenstein said the airline was working with a startup to use AI to price around 3% of domestic flights.
In Washington, lawmakers wanted to know whether Delta was engaging in “surveillance pricing,” which is when a company uses personal data to determine prices for an in