A Delta Platinum Medallion says the airline’s new AI Concierge canceled her flight home from Los Angeles after explicitly confirming that it would leave that flight alone. Delta reservations then reportedly told her it couldn’t restore the trip and that she’d have to spend nearly twice as much for a new one-way award ticket.
Disappointed as a #PlatinumMedallion member that @Delta ‘s new #DeltaAIConcierge canceled my flight home from LAX after saying that it wouldn’t! Now customer service says they can’t help and are expecting me to pay almost twice as much for just a one way to get home pic.twitter.com/kwXhraieZe
— Colleen McCarthy (@LAWL_een) August 3, 2026
Colleen McCarthy had a roundtrip SkyMiles award between New York JFK and Los Angeles. She wanted to cancel the outbound while keeping DL938 from Los Angeles back to JFK.
Delta Concierge told her:
Your JFK to LAX flight has been canceled, and your LAX to JFK flight remains booked.
Delta Air Lines at New York JFK
Except that isn’t what happened. The refund confirmation she posted shows that Delta redeposited all 32,400 miles and refunded the entire $11.20 in taxes. It lists both DL752 from JFK to Los Angeles and DL938 from Los Angeles to JFK. The receipt even displays “Refund Number: null,” which seems fitting for a live beta performing real transactions on customer tickets.
Even if her chat request had somehow been ambiguous, the Delta Concierge confirmation wasn’t. It told her the return remained booked, while Delta’s refund record shows that the entire award was canceled.
Update: A Delta spokesperson shares,
The team identified a bug that caused the return segment to be unintentionally canceled when a customer attempted a partial-trip cancellation, which Delta Concierge does not currently support (only full-itinerary cancellations).
Once identified, the customer’s original itinerary was quickly restored, and there was no disruption to her planned travel. We also corrected the functionality and updated Concierge guidance to prevent this from recurring.
Delta Just Expanded Its AI From Answering Questions To Messing With Tickets
Delta first announced Concierge in January 2025 as a generative AI assistant inside their Fly Delta app. It has access to trip and SkyMiles information, and accepts natural-language questions by text or voice.
The initial beta mostly answered questions about flights, status and benefits, located eCredits and tracked bags. Delta also promised that Concierge would hand customers to Reservations when the request required more help. But this year Delta gave the tool power to take action on itineraries. It can now cancel trips and offer rebooking choices during disruptions.
I wrote in June that Delta’s marketing chief said Concierge had reached 5% of app users, that rebooking and cancellation were “working really well,” and that the airline planned to move from 5% to 100% the following month. The app still prominently labels Concierge “BETA.”
Delta Air Lines at LAX
What I Think Went Wrong
A roundtrip reservation may look like two flights to the passenger, but it can be one ticket containing two flight coupons. Removing the outbound while preserving the return may require the ticket to be exchanged or reissued rather than simply “canceling a flight.”
The language model interprets the customer’s request and invokes tools connected to Delta’s reservation and ticketing systems. Somewhere in that chain, Concierge appears to have submitted a full-ticket cancellation, or Delta’s IT treated the inbound request from the AI tool as one. Then the conversational layer said that the return remained booked.
The AI may have described what the customer wanted it to accomplish rather than verifying what Delta’s system had actually done. In fact, Delta’s pricing answer may have been the correct one. A change to an itinerary converting a roundtrip into a one-way entails different pricing, and Delta one-ways can be more expensive than a roundtrip. Plus it would involve a change to whatever then-current pricing is. But the system should have quoted the new price and confirmed the customer wanted to do this before refunding the ticket.
Human Airline Agents Have Been Doing This For Years
The thing is that Delta’s AI here isn’t necessarily worse than their live reservations agents. I wrote more than a decade ago about a Delta agent making an adjustment to a passenger’s ticket and somehow voiding the entire e-ticket, including her return flight on US Airways.
I’ve also seen United agents accidentally cancel future flight segments while handling irregular operations. And just last month a Virgin Atlantic agent canceled a reader’s confirmed LATAM business-class award without permission, only to discover that the award space didn’t return. Virgin initially said it couldn’t fix the problem, then ultimately authorized the passenger to buy a replacement ticket at its expense.
Reservations agents misunderstand requests, key in the wrong instructions, cancel space before confirming that they can rebuild a ticket and confidently give out wrong information all the time. AI can eventually be better than the median reservations agent because it can apply the same rules consistently, remember every detail of the conversation and operate instantly during the weather events when airline call centers collapse. But Delta’s implementation appears to be flawed, at least in this case.
A bad human agent damages one reservation at a time. A defective AI workflow can damage thousands identically. Natural language sounds authoritative even when it isn’t tied to the underlying transaction and hasn’t verified what it’s saying actually is what happened.
The biggest problem, though, seems to me to be the human failure at the end. Delta Reservations refused to fix the problem that its own systems created.
Delta Air Lines at New York JFK
Other Airlines Are Doing This, Too
American has tested a AI chat assistant that rebooks customers when weather delays or cancels their flights. Air India’s AI.g assists with cancellations and refunds. Qatar Airways’ Sama offers conversational shopping and booking.
Air Canada once tried to distance itself from incorrect information provided by its chatbot, effectively suggesting that the chatbot was responsible for its own statements. A Canadian tribunal called that argument “remarkable” and held that the airline was responsible for information delivered through its own website.
How can Delta not own the result here? That’s a choice not to empower human agents, or the choice of a human not to spend time escalating to fix the problem.
Answer is simple delta remains the most premium world class airline in the world.
In fact their AI robot says so.But the reality is they are absolute crap and have always been.
They have to their credit brainwashed many of their flyers like a religious cult except they are no better and likely worse than all the other crappy US based airlines.There is no way in the world I would trust Delta and specifically a robot handling my booking ever.While I feel empathy for the passenger all I can say is really?Whats next hiring the robot to make your medical decisions
SIGH
Its a round-trip ticket. It common sense to knowcif you cancel the outboard the return will be cancelled. AA does tge exact same thing even on award tickets. For that reason you should always book award tickets as one ways.
All companies are moving to AI. The cost savings are just too great to ignore and honestly the C class doesn’t care about the quality of AI versus human beings. The very same tech people running during the Biden years that would not shut up about DEI now blabber on about “humanistic AI” and “responsible AI.” It’s a scam to get rid of workers as that is what AI is designed to do. Sure, it may have positive applications but it will be used by rid companies of those pesky and expensive workers.
Hey, can we have some sensible, baseline guardrails for AI, please. (Ok, some call it ‘regulations,’ and I know that’s triggering for some you, so that’s why I use euphemisms. Calm down, it’s not literal Communism, or even a mere ‘handout,’ just to ensure corporations can’t regularly abuse these new technologies to unilaterally screw over consumers and workers with impunity…) Or not. Yeah, probably ‘do-nothing’ is what we’ll do about all this. As is tradition. (Doesn’t have to be… but…)
@ Your Daddy — You are 100% incorrect. The ticket may be repriced, and it would be cancelled for a no show, but you can absolutely voluntarily cancel an outbound and retain a return.
I, and most human agents, know that rebooking runs the risk of repricing. Why, because being human, we have common sense. I hate dealing with AI chatbots/agents. They never solve the problem I am facing. Instead, they try to solve a different problem. It is totally frustrating.
The rollout of AI is going to be SNAFU of to quote Dr. Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters “a disaster of biblical proportions.”
@Your daddy – you are confidently incorrect here as Delta provides lower pricing on r/t awards vs two o/w awards. Your logic does apply to the vast majority of airlines but not here.
@Gene – correct
@George Romey — Huh, that almost felt a little pro-worker and consumer-advocacy-ish, which would be quite rare, coming from you. It’s like you’re almost starting to get it, whether corporate motivations are masked by “DEI” buzzwords or “responsible AI” PR, the root issue remains unmitigated corporate greed. However, I’m still keen to spot your attempts at stealthily inserting plausible deniability, sane-washing corporations and management, etc. So… like, was your concern above actually genuine? (I’ll provide the Wawa sandwiches this time.)
@Other Just Saying — Eh, humans certainly aren’t perfect, nor is this new software. Sometimes, some people do show ‘common’ sense, but we may need ‘better’ sense to actually solve real problems. Like, let’s be clear, certain folks can act as rigid machines sometimes, too. So, the solution is actually regulatory enforcement that ensures accountability. Otherwise, the ‘blame game’ will continue, corporations will act with impunity against consumers and workers, etc.
As someone who has become a fan of what AI can do for me, there are limited to how I use AI. IRROPS, particularly for frequent travelers who tend to have more specific needs, brings a lot of edge cases to the table. AI is not good at edge cases and it’s great at helping a passenger explore multiple options to determine which will be best. It simply tries to attempt to solve the problem in isolation of confounding factors. This is where a human becomes necessary.
Had this happen to me on Sunday on a United flight that experienced a 13-hour delay due to a mechanical. Had I let AI handle the situation I would have been flying out the next day…which did not work for me because I had to be at work. Discussion with an agent helped me determine the best course of action (for me, not United) that got me where I needed to be nearly 24 hours faster than taking the AI option.
I love AI, but when I need and want to talk to a human that is what I want…which is exactly why I avoid all airlines (and businesses) who make it hard to connect with a human.
So they never trained the AI how to cancel an outbound but keep the return on their own metal. They should never release a roadblock until it knows how to handle a specific transaction scenario. It
Fix the problem for the passenger. Fix the problem with the AI. But don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. There will be a learning/implementation curve with AI agents like this that will ultimately benefit businesses *and* customers who will get faster, more reliable help from an AI than from increasingly understaffed and undertrained call lines.
Businesses need to approach the cost of fixing AI errors as just another part of the cost of implementing a new technology.
Dwondemeant
A Florida man sued OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman after ChatGPT’s medical advice allegedly discouraged him from seeking treatment, leading to a near-fatal pulmonary embolism.
I second your SIGH
Shameful on Delta’s part for not overriding the system and taking care of a Platinum member.
@Thing 1 — Well said. So far, the expectations with most AI have been way outta whack. Tech vendors sold C-suite execs a fantasy. Infinite cost savings, zero staff, fat bonuses, and instant perfection. Instead, they bought customer service chaos. The problem is that until corporations are forced to absorb the real cost of these software failures (rather than turning customers into unpaid beta testers) they’ll keep releasing these broken workflows with limited accountability. I mean, Gary showed a Delta refund receipt that literally read ‘Refund Number: null’ on a live beta. *facepalm*
@ 1990 — Have a question where you want to know the incorrect answer? Just ask the AI on your phone!
@Gene — Did you see the cuckoo bananas hoops Ben (and now supposedly an expansive team, a Jeremy and a Howie) at OMAAT is trying to get more users to ‘register’ instead of being mere ‘Guest’ commenters, offering perks like a fake status and leaderboards, with the prize of a gift card to whoever games the system best. Surely, this will encourage better behavior… (and finally, monetary compensation, sorta, for @Tim Dunn!), and most definitely won’t lead to content self-moderation as no one would dare say anything critical of any partners-of-the-blog for fear of loss of fake-status… *gulp* (I take everything back, Ankur… BILT is so perfect! Even all that expiring BILT Cash! So great! Change nothing!)
Used Deltas AI last week when they had all the congestion and cancellations in the NYC area. One word – TERRIBLE. It was caught in an endless loop of starting over from the beginning and not accomplishing anything. Its obvious the product is far from ready for prime time.
@Joe — What if all of that was by-design? Like, to *not* help you. And, to *not* compensate you for the troubles Delta caused. (Just saying, maybe we should consider the AI is working ‘perfectly’ for management and their bottom line, but not necessarily for you, the passenger. These days, you aren’t even really the customer anymore; no, no that’s the banks. You’re more the product, and you don’t actually need to fly for the airline to make its money. In fact, it’s possible the airline may prefer to not have to fly. Ugh. So expensive. Pesky workers. Whiny passengers. Yuck. AI companies came to C-Suite and said, fire your customer service people, have these dumb passengers deal with this software that’ll keep ’em running around in circles. Works like a charm!)
I sincerely hope that Ai screws up Delta’s system via hallucinations thousands of times a day. I hope it gets so bad they have to rip the whole thing out but are screwed because they canned all the people who did it before.
Odds are to that I am correct that this will mess up sooner then later if current Ai is any judge. Then I hope any lawsuits are so large that it will eclipse any possible profit made off Ai.