Department of Transportation secretary Sean Duffy has sent a warning to airlines about price discrimination, in the wake of a political dust-up about Delta's deployment of an AI-assisted pricing tool.
"Let's sell prices on seats for what they should go for," the secretary said at an Aug. 5 press conference. "But to try to individualize pricing on seats based on how much you make or don't make or who you are, I can guarantee we would investigate if anyone does that."
Delta is currently using a tool developed by Fetcherr to generate fare offers on 3% of its domestic network and aspires to have it deployed on 20% of its domestic network by the end of the year.
In response to a July 21 letter by by Senate Democrats Mark Warner of Virginia, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Ruben Gallego of Arizona, Delta chief external affairs officer Peter Carter wrote last week that "there is no fare product Delta has ever used, is testing or plans to use that targets customers with individualized prices based on personal data."
But Gallego, at the very least, remains unconvinced, citing airline president Glen Hauenstein's remark at Delta's Investor Day last November that with the Fetcherr tool, Delta "will have a price that's available on that flight, on that time to the individual."
Duffy said he accepts Delta's assertion that it isn't and won't price discriminate.
"Delta has clarified that they are not going to do that, I'll take them at face value," he said.