Delta Will Use AI To Cut Costs And Set A Different Ticket Price For Every Passenger—CEO Says Profits Could Rise 50%
Delta Will Use AI To Cut Costs And Set A Different Ticket Price For Every Passenger—CEO Says Profits Could Rise 50%
Delta Will Use AI To Cut Costs And Set A Different Ticket Price For Every Passenger—CEO Says Profits Could Rise 50%
Delta CEO Ed Bastian says artificial intelligence could increase profits 50%. The airline’s plans point toward fewer office jobs, automated decisions and different fares for individual passengers.
When lawmakers objected to “surveillance pricing,” Delta told Congress that it was not setting individualized fares using a customer’s personal data. Delta has continued to say that its current AI system uses aggregated market information, not an individual’s circumstances or prior purchases.
That’s true today but is contradicted by what they told investors: an offer available at that moment to “you, the individual.” The airline’s response collapsed two different questions into one:
Is Delta currently feeding a named customer’s personal data into Fetcherr to calculate that customer’s airfare?
Does Delta intend to move from static fare grids toward individually generated offers?
Delta answered the first and pretended it answered the second. The company was very specific about what it was not doing at that moment while its investor presentation was specific about where offer management was headed.