alt Hacker NewsUnited Airlines bans AI agents from booking flights on behalf of travelers
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So, all of these business models that work by creating annoying barriers that are essentially getting customers to work for free are going the way of the dodo.
Oh, you need me to go through twenty separate pages and popups to finally cancel my subscription to your shitty predatory service? Claude doesn't care.
My Flight was cancelled, so I need to wait on hold for 10 hours, re-calling after getting dropped 'accidentally' 12 times during said process so I can talk to someone who will process a refund for me? Claude is happy to do that.
Claude doesn't care if he has to wait 2 months on-hold. Claude just needs my "Text-To-Voice" custom tool, my "User-Verification-Values" custom tool, and my "Call-Via-IP" custom tool/etc and he will work as long as I need him to.
BS now in TOS is the same thing. No I won't read it, yes we both know that. But Claude can, and now I can get an AI to find the best service for whatever it is I need that doesn't have shitty TOS terms with a single prompt.
> "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"
What if the airlines instead focused on delivering great service at a competitive price?
"Nah, let's escalate this arms race instead."
They're just fans of bureaucracy and making things complicated. I don't see any other reason.
But it’s ok when WE do it…
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/economy/delta-united-jetblue...
It’s an industry AI vs consumer AI arms race, and industry sure doesn’t want the consumer to win.
Honest version: "We decided to ban AI agents until we figure out dark patterns that work on them too."
I'd guess a key reason for this is because agents can't be - effectively - advertised to or upsold on anything. They should enjoy watching as bookings trend down over time. And/or agents just bypass their ban.
They really can’t. As long as you run Claude/Codex desktop or plugin, it will control your web browser session indistinguishable from your own user actions.
Unless there is some Claude AI safety concern of booking tickets.
"prohibit use by unauthorized, third-party personal AI agents" Remind me where anything "unauthorized" can book flights for me??
So basically, not a ban. They all ARE authorized.
I should be able to use agents as long as they use chatbots.
Can't risk customers finding good deals
I enjoy my popcorn reading comments from people that build website that are designed to capture eyeballs and clicks arguing over how easy/hard it is to book travel.
Only if they also ban them from chatting with me when there's a problem.
What on earth are they going to demo at new model releases now.
This is infuriating. Having just done a fair bit of AI-assisted work with booking.com (why should I click all the candidate hotels and check 1-star reviews, or verify if the view from the window really does include the sea as stated?), I was hoping to soon also automate the user-hostile minefield that airlines make me pass through every time I buy an airplane ticket. The amount of deceptive dark patterns on airline sites is staggering, so is their lack of competence in building UIs that work.
I was happy, because we now finally have AI to take the drudgery of our lives, so that I can write my poetry, paint and do other human stuff. But no, the airlines will ensure that the drudgery is ours, AI is only for them to use in automated "assistants".
If you now say something with the word "competition" in it, I will laugh at you out loud. There is no competition. All airlines will copy the same idiotic pattern.
Excuse me while I tell my agent to wear a mustache.
Oh no ... how are we going to do travel booking demos now?
All their stated reasons are simply BS excuses. Come on. We all know the real reason: The airline(s) want to get their beaks wet in the deal. Either by a contract that gets them yearly guaranteed revenue for doing nothing, or by some kind of deal where the agent guys promise to steer users to one airline preferentially instead of finding the best deal (or users' other preferences).
If Meta or Claude or whoever came to an airline offering that kind of deal, they'd build an MCP in a week and solve the very simple regulatory issues - simply add a skill that shows the exact same UI of "promise you have no swords, machine guns or bombs in your luggage") to the user that the airline's own site uses.
Until that happens, they'll just ban them.
Not gonna make it
Ah, a point of competition!
Too late already did it
a dying breed. somebody should make an "agentic airline"
This is how the dinosaurs remove themselves from the social gene pool.
Another reason not to fly this shit airline. Not that I needed more, but I’ll take it.
Good luck with that. My AI browsers computers now like a human and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.
They can't ban what's hard or even impossible to detect. Anyway, what a stupid, even idiotic move! This is a big win for their competitors!
Totally fair to not want agents running amok on their systems and sites. This blocks corporations from having an AI travel agency manage their flights and spamming at scale.
They are not going to care too much if you as an individual have hacked up something that does it for you. Hope you get a good seat!
How about I'll stop using AI bots to book flights if United stops using chatbots for customer "support"?
I'm bearing on the impacts of AI in general but maybe, just maybe, it might be the death blow to the demand pricing that is so rife in booking airline tickets? Customers hate it. People know that a given flight might cost $200 or $1000 depending on what time of your day you try and book, whether you try and book on a weekday or weekend, if you're booking from a corporate IP address and so on. None of these things have anything to do with how full the plane is. They're all UX anti-patterns to ask "how much money do you have?" before giving you a price. And it needs to die.
Airlines better get used to this because this is an arms race they cannot possibly win. Good.
I littery stopped using websites apart from sites like this one or reddit. I use AI for everything else. Also for booking stuff. It's the future. Website UI will eventually become obsolete. Companies will provide API endpoint for ai agents that either work with text or realtime on demand UIs. This action is putting you in a yahoo like position.
yet when they strand me 1000miles from my destination I cant get through to a human due to an LLM. Yeh no. fuck them. This airline is trash
Everyone is suggesting ways to circumvent this. But at the end of the day, they will just raise prices for everyone if agents affect their profits or risk.
Tell me you don't know how technology works without telling me.
tell me you have no idea about tech without telling me.
Tell me you have no idea how technology works without telling me.
Meanwhile my ChatGPT dot is doing all kinds of crazy stuff with Delta on my behalf. Really convenient tbh. My chat bot talking to a Delta chat bot.
dealing with bullshit is like 95% of the pitch of agents. Few things are more bullshit than dealing with airlines.
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I'm surprised they haven't started restricting sales by third parties entirely yet (yes I know that's not related to AI agents).
Some of the points they raise, I do think are cause for concern as it relates to potential legal liabilities... but I don't see how they could possibly restrict AI usage meaningfully, besides just getting the big popular groups to assist in limiting their own services somehow, which doesn't solve the issue entirely of course, especially with local LLM usage on the rise.