United Airlines bans AI agents from booking flights on behalf of travelers

Re:United Airlines bans AI agents from booking flights on be... by jubilanti on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @09:13PM (#50462210)

This is an easily debunked myth, for first-party direct bookings. Third party aggregators and package deals are shady as hell and do all kinds of tricks. But I challenge you to record a screen cast proving that you're seeing different prices for a direct booking for the same ticket (including fare class) just based on different browsers or profiles.

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Re:United Airlines bans AI agents from booking flights on be... by e63f67dd-065b on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @11:15PM (#50463008)

This used to be fairly widespread a long time ago. There used to be fares that are restricted for sale only in a certain country's POS (I believe these are still alive in ATPCO) but not really used anymore.

I remember examples of round-trip ticket A-B-A costing $x in A, $x/2 in B (plus another fare for country C) for some city pairs, but I don't think this has really been a thing in a decade at least.

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Re:United Airlines bans AI agents from booking flights on be... by weedfroglozenge on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @11:52PM (#50463191)

Are you only just finding out about dynamic pricing? It's still in full swing everywhere. If you want to witness it, the Chinese websites Temu & AliExpress experiment with this on nearly every item. Flights are exactly the same, and because you haven't experienced it shows you haven't caught it

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