Delta’s new AI-powered pricing strategy • Hacker News Board

Re: Delta’s new AI-powered pricing strategy

#51

Post by nradov » Tue, Jul 29, 2025, 9:10 PM UTC

buyucu wrote: post #41

nradov wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For better or worse I think Delta will be happy to lose you as a customer. They are not a low-cost carrier, and their current business strategy is focused on charging higher fares for slightly better service than the competitors. As far as they're concerned, price-sensitive consumers who are looking for the cheapest fare can go fly on Frontier or whatever.

I travel around the world a lot, and Delta was by far one of the the worst airlines I have ever taken. I doubt they 'charge extra for slightly better service'.

Delta's strategy might fail but that's what they're trying to do. Delta is mainly competing against American and United, and to a lesser extent against Southwest. Whether Delta is worse than Singapore Airlines or Emirates or something doesn't really matter.

Re: Delta’s new AI-powered pricing strategy

#52

Post by AnthonyMouse » Tue, Jul 29, 2025, 9:20 PM UTC

eastbound wrote: post #29

morkalork wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming their model is accurate at predicting economic value and assuming that the wage gap between men and women still exists, wouldn't it be relatively straightforward to show men as a group are quoted higher prices?

Men aren’t a protected class. I’m not sarcastic: They really are not, it’s legally ok to charge men more.

The general problem here is that "disparate impact" is incoherent. If you charge everyone the same price then you're de facto excluding people with less money, and therefore have a disparate impact on the basis of various protected classes because of the correlation between e.g. race and poverty.

Now suppose you charge less to people with less money. Is that what you're supposed to do? No, sorry, there was a preexisting disparity in your customer population on the basis of national origin and doing that makes it worse, you still lose.

There are multiple protected classes and how something affects one of them is often the inverse of how it affects a different one, so it isn't possible to not have a disparate impact. And then whether something is considered to in any given case is nothing but politics and vibes.

Re: Delta’s new AI-powered pricing strategy

#53

Post by dortlick » Tue, Jul 29, 2025, 9:25 PM UTC

Don't we already have individual pricing on lots of things like used cars, contractors doing work on your house, car insurance, etc? Most people that work in sales have some ability to adjust pricing based on their personal judgement of the customer(mark). Do you think there's not discrimination by a contractor when they come into your house and size you up and what they think you are willing to pay or maybe they just don't like your race/religion/smell. I'm just a little confused when it's so outrageous if airlines or amazon gives different prices to different people when it happens every time there is actual one on one price negotiation.

Re: Delta’s new AI-powered pricing strategy

#54

Post by dortlick » Tue, Jul 29, 2025, 9:30 PM UTC

The source for this "article" is a company trying to sell an air travel related service that would be out of business if airlines changes their pricing model. It's also clearly written with AI hence the bullet point recap at the end. So I would take it all with a huge grain of salt.

Re: Delta’s new AI-powered pricing strategy

#55

Post by lostmsu » Tue, Jul 29, 2025, 9:38 PM UTC

belter wrote: post #11

Relax, the ticket isn’t $4,999 because you’re broke, it’s pre‑success tax on your inevitable successful exit. They do see your YCombinator IP after all. Or...open the site in Lynx on an old ThinkPad. The fare will drop by half.

Chromebook

Re: Delta’s new AI-powered pricing strategy

#56

Post by supportengineer » Tue, Jul 29, 2025, 9:43 PM UTC

anticensor wrote: post #17

jfghi wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By defaulting to high until low is demonstrated?

By defaulting to infinity (not selling to the person at all) until enough info is demonstrated.

I can see that now.

"For an extra 15% off your final purchase, simply enter your social security number!"

Re: Delta’s new AI-powered pricing strategy

#57

Post by louthy » Tue, Jul 29, 2025, 10:14 PM UTC

usefulcat wrote: post #49

Seems like there's a relatively simple solution for this: allow airline tickets to be resold. Apart from the fact that this restriction massively benefits airlines, I've never understood why it's not allowed. No matter what, you still have to go through security and present your ID there, so the additional security benefit of knowing a traveler's identity at the time of purchase seems pretty marginal.

Ticket touts on the most popular routes? No thanks!

Re: Delta’s new AI-powered pricing strategy

#58

Post by fmobus » Tue, Jul 29, 2025, 10:14 PM UTC

usefulcat wrote: post #49

Seems like there's a relatively simple solution for this: allow airline tickets to be resold. Apart from the fact that this restriction massively benefits airlines, I've never understood why it's not allowed. No matter what, you still have to go through security and present your ID there, so the additional security benefit of knowing a traveler's identity at the time of purchase seems pretty marginal.

If resale was freely allowed, you'd get a ton of middlemen skimming the margins, i.e. arbitrating. Like we have with concert tickets now.

Re: Delta’s new AI-powered pricing strategy

#59

Post by bitshiftfaced » Tue, Jul 29, 2025, 10:26 PM UTC

fmobus wrote: post #58

usefulcat wrote: post #49

Seems like there's a relatively simple solution for this: allow airline tickets to be resold. Apart from the fact that this restriction massively benefits airlines, I've never understood why it's not allowed. No matter what, you still have to go through security and present your ID there, so the additional security benefit of knowing a traveler's identity at the time of purchase seems pretty marginal.

If resale was freely allowed, you'd get a ton of middlemen skimming the margins, i.e. arbitrating. Like we have with concert tickets now.

I'm imagining a website that functions like a commodity trading website that allows anyone to buy and sell tickets for a given airline/time/location. Airlines could buy back tickets if they wanted.

Re: Delta’s new AI-powered pricing strategy

#60

Post by planetpluta » Tue, Jul 29, 2025, 10:40 PM UTC

svachalek wrote: post #47

MITSardine wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not usually up to businesses to compensate wealth inequality by adapting prices to customers. I personally find this appalling, not because of the prospect of paying more or less, but because of the arbitrariness and opacity of it all. I'm not too excited for a future where we'll have to spoof various browser identities and try different times of day and VPNs to book plane tickets... At the extreme, some people…

Historically, all prices are negotiated. We ended up with a culture of flat pricing for efficiency, with only a few high value items like cars being negotiated. You walk into a car dealer and spend hours to determine exactly how much they can get you to pay for the car you want. But now with advanced automation, it's worth the complexity to extract the maximum value out of each customer again, even on small purchases…

This is an interesting way to think about it. I would argue that flat pricing wasn’t for efficiency but “fairness”.

And also point out that AI driven price discrimination isn’t anywhere close to negotiated. You’re stuck with the price the machine gives you, with little to no recourse, short of rewriting your entire digital life!