United Airlines is blocking third-party artificial intelligence agents from booking flights and managing customer accounts.
United Airlines Holdings Inc announced the policy tightening on November 11. It adjusted its booking, ticketing, and distribution policies.
The policy update splits the booking journey in two. Autonomous software may search schedules and display fares. It cannot complete transactions.
United warned that sharing account logins with external software can expose sensitive information. This can lead to unauthorized charges or mileage redemptions.
sharing account credentials with personal, third-party, AI assistants can expose sensitive information, and actions taken by these tools may result in unintended purchases, account changes, or use of MileagePlus miles.
United Airlines
Automated check-in routines executed by bots could violate Federal Aviation Administration and Department of Transportation mandates. Passengers must personally confirm their luggage is free of hazardous items like explosives. The carrier argues this step cannot be reliably automated without direct human acknowledgement.
Roughly 33% of adults have used generative AI to research upcoming travel, according to booking platform Hopper. Hopper reported that domestic airfares in the United States for Thanksgiving and Christmas are up 31% and 23% respectively compared to the previous year. The Federal Trade Commission directed United, Delta Air Lines Inc, and JetBlue Airways Corp to supply information regarding how personal data is used in their pricing models.
The policy shields the direct relationship between passengers and the airline.
United is saying they don’t want to add yet another, and potentially even more powerful, intermediary than they already face in terms of Google search, price-comparison metasearch sites and online travel agencies.
Henry Harteveldt, Atmosphere Research Group analyst
Flight searches incur server costs for airlines. “Flight searches cost airlines money, and undoubtedly United wants to avoid the expense associated with the surge of AI bot flight searches,” Henry Harteveldt, an aviation analyst at Atmosphere Research Group, told CBS News.
Traditional aggregators like Google Flights, Hopper, and Kayak will continue to list United tickets. Autonomous bots face closed checkout doors.
“consumers shouldn't find it any more difficult to find good fares on the airline,” aviation analyst Henry Harteveldt said. Blocking bots does not make discovering tickets easier either.
Other carriers are charting different paths. Southwest Airlines introduced a ChatGPT integration to let users search inventory directly through the AI platform.
Delta Air Lines permits properly authenticated assistants to handle reservations under strict safeguards. American Airlines requires written permission for automated tools.
The restrictions apply directly to United’s digital platforms and indirectly through travel agencies and ticket aggregators.
Travelers relying on generative AI can still use the tools for research. The final buy must be completed by a human user on the airline’s website or app.
The airline will honor any reservations completed by automated tools before November 11.
Earlier coverage: United Airlines Bans AI Agents From Booking Flights, Citing Risks
