News and notes from around the interweb:
- Delta moves toward eliminating set prices in favor of AI that determines how much you personally will pay for a ticket
“Personalized pricing has been an airline goal for the past decade and a half,” Gary Leff, a travel industry authority who first noted Delta’s AI strategy, told Fortune. “Delta is the first major airline to speak so publicly about its use of AI pricing, to tout it for its potential upside at its investor day in the fall and to offer concrete metrics around its use in its recent earnings call.”
…To complicate matters, while industry experts expect the impact of AI to mean more revenue for Delta, the impact for individual passengers is less certain. In the short-term, AI might mean more discounts offered upfront when Delta needs to fill seats, said Leff. Short-term, shoppers might benefit from using a VPN and clearing cookies when browsing for airfares, but long-term, Delta and other airlines might require passengers “to be logged in for purchase of tickets in order to obtain status benefits from an airline, essentially being fully within their ecosystem to gain the benefits of that system (i.e. submit to personalized pricing to get extra legroom seats),” Leff said.
- Airlines sell bonus miles but don’t usually monetize status, outside of recognizing customers for their ticket spend, or indirectly based on revenue a customer generates through their credit card partner. Vietnam Airlines, though, is now selling 90 days of double or triple qualifying miles which is brilliant, though fencing it to exclude residents of Vietnam.
This expands their partnership with StatusMatch which has been offering paid LotusMiles status matches and even matches hotel status. As a SkyTeam member, their status is even useful flying Delta (I use my Air France status for priority check-in and free checked bags as well as free exit row seats).
- Mastercard will issue a higher tier of card, ‘World Legend’ – presumably the difference being higher swipe fees funding more benefits.
- New Details in Air India Crash Probe Shift Focus to Senior Pilot: Black-box recording and report details indicate the flight’s captain switched off fuel flow to engines in succession, one after the other. (HT: crucker)
- Feel good story of the day:
"Dear Southwest Airlines,
I'm hoping you can share this post so that I can be sure that it finds its way to a very special Southwest flight attendant. All I know about her is that her name is Anisse. My husband and 9 month old son were flying from Fort Lauderdale back home to… pic.twitter.com/bpjGljKF7o
— Mr Commonsense (@fopminui) July 16, 2025
- Every single day… all day long… no matter the airline. Such a terrible customer experience.
Shout out to @united for making people gate check their bags due to 'no more room' in the overhead bins, only for more than half them be empty. Flight is delayed and people will be missing their connections — a personal item will not be enough for an unexpected overnight stay. pic.twitter.com/IMwtt3ddWz
— Anna-Marie (@ruoff47) July 17, 2025
@AmericanAir Just boarded AA3527 (group 6) and was told I had to check my roller bag due to no space. Got on the plane and saw rows of empty bins (see pic). Can you please help me understand why? This is very disappointing. pic.twitter.com/aVSTfmStxg
— Brian Cromer (@briancromer) July 16, 2025
@AmericanAir forced me to check in my suitcase because “there’s no more room”. pic.twitter.com/YIe94YrBhQ
— Jeremi ツ (@imjeremi) July 16, 2025
Congrats on the quote in Fortune, Gary! The ‘thought leader’ strikes again! Woo!
On the Air India 171 updates, if it really was pilot suicide, it’s so disturbing. I’ll admit, I didn’t want to accept that as the reality. It’s just so wrong. Criminal.
Have been following Captain Steeeve‘s videos on YouTube; he’s great. As he and his recent guests have discussed, there clearly needs to be more support and to de-stigmatize mental health counseling and treatment in the aviation industry. I get it, folks want to keep their jobs, but also, people shouldn’t die like this. Tragic.
How will AI work with business travel? Especially if different people use the same admin asst and they each have a different preferred airline? Definitely won’t be able to log into their ecosystem as a state employee.
Is it just me, or have we replaced the word “algorithm” with “AI” to make it sound like a new thing?
Delta is dreaming (again). The only way the AI pricing approach works is if the third party booking sites are also using it to display “specialized” fares to you for the other airline fares displayed in your search, too.
Just use a VPN and clean/private browser every time you purchase a ticket. And enter your SkyMiles number (if it remotely matters to you) after purchase.
@Captain Freedom — And when selecting locations for your VPN, and as I believe @Gene once recommended, please consider Romania. The weather in Bucharest is lovely, year round, and the airfare is super cheap. Noroc!
@Pat — Can’t wait (sarcasm) for the next round of ‘buzzwords’ in tech/finance/culture. Before, it was ‘FinTech’ and ‘an app’ for everything and the ‘dot com’ bubble, etc. ‘Unicorn!’ Oh, how the ‘hype train’ continues… (The HBO show Silicon Valley really exemplified this nonsense for that era.)
Premium Delta Greed on the Rampage.
I hope the Air India crash process continues to a conclusion without political interference.
@jns — Once again, I’ll admit, I was initially skeptical, speculating that it could have been mechanical failure (Boeing/GE problem) or fuel contamination, but it really does seem closer to 4U9525, ‘deliberate’ action by the pilot. Like, pilots don’t ‘accidentally’ turn off both fuel control switches one second each the other within 30 seconds of takeoff. So, the question now is more about ‘motive.’ Why did that pilot do what he did? We may never know. And, if you/anyone really is ‘dealing with something,’ please don’t take others with you. There are more honorable ways. Seriously. So, unlike AA5342 earlier this year (when you-know-who wrongly, initially blamed ‘DEI’), there does not appear to be any meaningful ‘political’ interference with AI171 so far, unless you are aware of something that the rest of us (and the investigators) aren’t.
Does Delta have fixed ticket prices now? I don’t think so.
@ Pat — Bingo!
High time.m for airlines to monetize carry ons. Rationing the supply of slots is not an efficient economic policy
Bins are the most expensive real estate they have since bags in the hold are cheap to load and offload while bags in the cabin cause expensively long turnarounds and loads of delays. And they’re GIVING IT OUT FOR FREE while charging for checked bags (cheaper for them to handle)?? Completely idiotic.
So if you pay more once, the “AI” will never offer you a good deal again.
The suggestion to use VPN and clear cookies is junk — simply use Google Flights or similar aggregator.
That article is pretty bad, written by someone who doesn’t understand airline distribution but wants to sound like an expert.
@1990
Your “buddy” wasn’t wrong. Lobach was ONLY in that helicopter because she was a lesbian AND a White House staffer. She couldn’t even follow basic instructions from ATC and should have never been allowed to even ride a bicycle…..of course her boss wasn’t too good at that either.
Cheers!
@Mary – consider this longer discussion rather than an article that picks a few quotes https://viewfromthewing.com/several-airlines-now-quietly-let-ai-set-ticket-prices-surprisingly-thats-great-news-for-your-wallet/
@CHRIS — Ya know, this is why I like fishing… sometimes the bait works. Yeah, the background identifiers (sexuality, gender, partisan affiliation, etc.) of those (or any) pilot really isn’t the story, but it’s great ‘culture war’ play for that moment, if you’re going for ‘bad-faith’ methods. Very Roy Cohn to not let a tragedy go to waste. From the other perspective, it would seem anyone who is not a white, straight, Christian, wealthy, at-least middle-aged, conservative man is basically automatically gonna be deemed ‘inexperienced’ or whatever, then scapegoated, even when their background is not at fault. Likewise, anyone who fits that description above will likely be deemed a ‘bigot’ by the left; also not good. Anyway, if we’re gonna do ‘this’ all over again, might as well call-in @Mantis, @Andy S, @Michael Mainello, @AC, and the other anti-‘DEI’ crusaders. Great again…
@1990 add me to the list. The chopper pilot had no business flying. Killed my friends for DEI.
@Rjb — I feel for your loss.
Still, the ‘background’ of that pilot is not the cause. Banning or restricting anyone on the basis of gender or sexual orientation from piloting is not the answer. The main restrictions are ‘age’ and ‘health’; of course, you should not/cannot legally fly impaired.
All four pilots and the ATC involved in the AA5342 incident were ‘qualified,’ but even the ‘best’ can/do make mistakes; clearly, there was an ‘error.’ However, AA5342 was an *accident* (not deliberate), as far as we know now. I await the final report because we should learn from accidents, so that ideally they never happen again. They say, the rules are written in blood.
As with Air India, the nationality, religion, etc., of the pilot is likely not the cause either. Sadly, it seems, AI171 is more like the Germanwings incident, a murder-suicide.