Delta Air Lines is using AI to price tickets now and the goal is to create ‘a fare just for you’. The idea is that a specific flight on a given flight at the moment you go to buy it is offered “to you, the individual.”
Many airlines are working towards this, with varying degrees of success. But AI is going much further in the airline industry. Some parts of the business are so heavily regulated it’s tough to see AI making quick progress improving performance and safety. But over two years, 8% of the jobs at United are being replaced.
And United is using AI to do a much better job helping customers understand what’s happening when flights get delayed. CEO Scott Kirby explained in an investor presentation on Wednesday,
The goal is to get to a point where anytime there’s a flight delay, we tell customers in clear, plain English that we send them text messages.
We’re going to start to send them videos, like maintenance videos and cool stuff about exactly what’s going on with their airplane and why, and try to give them really good information. Generally, I mean, most people in here fly, and if you know, it’s the uncertainty that’s a killer.
You walk up to a gate and it says your flight’s on time, and you’re supposed to be boarding, and there’s no airplane at the gate. I don’t think that happens at United, but that does happen at some airlines. It infuriates you. Giving people good information. The goal I’ve set for the team is pretend I’m on the flight, and I’ve asked what’s going on with my flight. What would you tell me? I want to tell all of our customers that. We’ve been doing that.
…I got some phenomenal statistics when we do it and do it well, but it’s really hard to do for 6,000 flights a day, especially when there’s weather and it’s uncertain. Thunderstorms. Maybe the airport’s closing, maybe it’s not. You don’t know. It’s really hard to do. I think we’re probably two to three times better than any other airline in the world, just because we’re the only airline that’s really worked on it and tried to do it. We’ve decided that the current path that we’re on is never going to get to the nirvana that we want. We’ve started a brand new work path that’s built native AI, building the right data so that it doesn’t require any human intervention.
The AI will be able to tell you about every flight, and what’s going on with every flight with no human intervention, just from all the other data that we have and everything else that it can see about the system. I think that’ll be great for customers. It won’t only help with customers, it’ll cause more brand loyal customers to fly United. It’ll be unique. It’ll feel different than any other airline in the world when we’re able to do that. I’m convinced we’re going to find all kinds of ways to run our operation more efficiently when we’ve built that. That to me is what AI can do. When we’re building that, we’re going to be able to run the airline better, a lot better than we could before, because we’ve built that infrastructure for Every Flight Story.
United was among the first and really is the best at communicating the reason behind delays, and doing it in clear language that the average passenger can understand. American Airlines has just started on their journey doing this.
I’ve seen messages from United like,
“We want you to know your flight is departing late because we needed to finish cleaning your plane.”
“…our connecting flight to Bangor was canceled due to a lack of FAA staff.”
“…we care about our customers and are just waiting on a few more people before we can take off…”
But actually seeing maintenance videos would be next level amazing, and the kind of thing that I think would help differentiate the airline and not just among aviation geeks. Airlines are notoriously seen as black boxes. That’s the kind of transparency that would give customers confidence
The number one thing they have now is the ramp up of Starlink. Kirby says that they receive “90-plus NPS when we have Starlink on the airplane.” But airlines usually isolate net promoter scores for flights that are on-time to understand the value of their product investments. Delayed flights are miserable. But this would go a long way towards assauging some of the unhappiness around delays, even if it can’t replace getting a customer where they expect to be on schedule.
Sounds great until random passengers start giving suggestions on how to fix the problem.
Have you tried turning it off and then back on?
Clear the cache
Hit it with a hammer
What a novel concept—actually telling passengers the truth.
Airlines have spent years feeding people vague, often untrue explanations about why a flight is delayed or why an aircraft is suddenly out of service. Most frequent travelers know the script by now, and it’s incredibly frustrating. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve dealt with this—American Airlines in particular seems to struggle here—with chronic delays paired with almost no meaningful information.
Passengers are essentially treated like cattle: keep them in place, give them just enough to manage the crowd, and move on. But when something goes wrong, the explanations often don’t pass the smell test. It’s usually either a catch-all excuse or something that’s clearly not the full story. The reality is they almost always know the underlying issue—they just don’t share it.
That’s the real problem. With honest, specific information—whether it’s crew timing, maintenance, ATC restrictions, or cascading network delays—people could actually make informed decisions. Do you wait it out, rebook, or find another way to get where you’re going? Right now, that choice gets taken away because the information isn’t credible.
If United follows through on this and commits to real transparency—not just when it reflects well on them—it would be a meaningful shift. People respond well to being treated like adults. Personally, I’d take the truth every time over the vague, generic explanations we’ve all gotten used to hearing at the gate.excuses they give at the gate etc.
I can’t wait for the bloopers reel from this to hit the internet/social media/memesphere.
Is this better than their current approach? (Lying.)
We really need an EU/UK261 equivalent and to bring back Rule 240, so that when a maintenance issue under the airlines control occurs, passengers get compensated for the inconvenience and that they can get on the next available flight with any carrier (no additional cost to them). These are businesses, and when they fail to deliver, passengers shouldn’t be on the hook, the airline should.