{"id":257024,"date":"2025-07-11T20:02:17","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T20:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/257024\/"},"modified":"2025-07-11T20:02:17","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T20:02:17","slug":"delta-using-ai-for-pricing-tickets-to-manipulate-market-increase-profits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/257024\/","title":{"rendered":"Delta Using AI For Pricing Tickets, To Manipulate Market, Increase Profits"},"content":{"rendered":"

Delta Air Lines is the most profitable airline in the United States, and also tends to innovate in many areas, both for better and worse. Along those lines, over the past year we\u2019ve heard Delta executives talk about how the airline will increasingly be using artificial intelligence (AI) to price airline tickets.<\/p>\n

It sounds like the airline is planning on massively increasing its use of this capability over the coming months. But what does that really mean for customers? Well, it\u2019s probably not good\u2026<\/p>\n

Delta is hugely ramping up use of AI for ticket pricing<\/p>\n

During the Delta 2024 Investor Day presentation, Delta President Glen Hauenstein started teasing how the airline would start using AI to price airline tickets. As he described it, \u201cwe will have a price available on that airplane at that time that\u2019s available to you the individual,\u201d and described it as \u201ca super analyst, an analyst working 24\/7 a day,\u201d to determine the optimal pricing. <\/p>\n

During the Delta Q2 2025 earnings call, Hauenstein was asked about the progress of this. TD Cowen Analyst Tom Fitzgerald asked the following:<\/p>\n

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\u201cI wanted to touch in on your comment on Fetcherr. I think back at the Investor Day, you mentioned that their revenue management solutions were being deployed on about 1% of the network. I was wondering if you could tell us where that number stands today and then just provide a little more details on what you\u2019ve learned with another 6 months of experimenting with AI and revenue management.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Here\u2019s how Hauenstein responded:<\/p>\n

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\u201cSo today, we\u2019re about 3% of domestic. Our goal is to have about 20% by the end of the year, and that\u2019s a goal. I mean we can report back on what the actual numbers are. But you have to train these models as you might and you have to give it multiple opportunities to provide different results. So we\u2019re in a heavy testing phase. We like what we see. We like it a lot, and we\u2019re continuing to roll it out, but we\u2019re going to take our time and make sure that the rollout is successful as opposed to trying to rush it and risk that there are unwanted answers in there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo this \u2014 the more data it has and the more cases we give it, the more it learns, and we\u2019re really excited about it, and we\u2019re really excited about partnering with Fetcherr.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As you can see, by the end of 2025, Delta may be using its new AI technology to price 20% of tickets, which is an incredibly fast rollout, given how disruptive this could be.<\/p>\n

\"\"Delta is increasingly using AI to price airline tickets<\/p>\n

What are the implications of AI pricing for airline tickets?<\/p>\n

When I first heard of the concept of AI for airline ticket pricing, I was a little skeptical. Why? Well, airline revenue management already uses a lot of automation, as airlines have millions of different fare combinations filed at any given point, and technology is heavily used with that.<\/p>\n

So I wondered, is this AI pricing change actually going to impact consumers, or is this just a way for Delta to cut some jobs in its pricing department? After all, airlines generally charge as much as they can for any given flight, based on the competitive landscape.<\/p>\n

What does the transition to AI airline pricing actually look like, though? As you can see, Delta is partnering with Fetcherr<\/a> on this, an Israeli company that was founded in 2019. Partnering with Delta is a massive win for Fetcherr \u2014 the world of airline pricing is notoriously tough to break into, so the fact that Fetcherr managed to get Delta onboard could lead to much further adaptation.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve done a bit of digging on Fetcherr, and the goal is pretty clear. For example, I watched the below pitch for Fetcherr, and a couple of things stood out. First of all, Fetcherr is described as offering \u201ca proprietary engine that accurately and granularly predicts demand and enables high frequency pricing methods used in financial markets and e-commerce.\u201d <\/p>\n

Fetcherr has a tactical pricing approach, which \u201cmeans that it lets our customer take advantage of the vulnerability of their competitors\u2019 rule based system,\u201d \u201cunderstanding the rules, and then manipulating the market, in order to gain more profit.\u201d The company claims that in testing phases, it has seen revenue uplift of up to 9%, with a 60% decrease in manual processes.<\/p>\n

Below you can see some of its services in action.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll have to see how this plays out in practice, but here several thoughts:<\/p>\n