{"id":914149,"date":"2026-11-12T00:00:13","date_gmt":"2026-11-12T00:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/914149\/"},"modified":"2026-11-12T00:00:13","modified_gmt":"2026-11-12T00:00:13","slug":"bots-dont-fly-here-united-airlines-restricts-ai-agents-from-booking-flights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/914149\/","title":{"rendered":"Bots don’t fly here: United Airlines restricts AI agents from booking flights"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

AI agents just got denied boarding at United Airlines (UAL<\/a>). <\/p>\n

Ahead of holiday travel, the airline company is cracking down on third-party artificial intelligence agents as more consumers turn to AI tools. <\/p>\n

“To be honest, I don’t want to create another middleman,” United CEO Scott Kirby told the Wall Street Journal<\/a> on Tuesday. <\/p>\n

AI agents function as personal assistants for tasks such as scheduling, shopping, and research. Unlike conventional chatbots, they operate autonomously and are capable of completing transactions independently. <\/p>\n

The airline is not the only company to try to limit agentic AI from using its platform. In September, Amazon (AMZN<\/a>) blocked<\/a> Meta’s (META<\/a>) Muse AI agent<\/a> from shopping on its site. <\/p>\n

Other airlines, however, have taken a different tack. In October, Southwest Airlines (LUV<\/a>) launched<\/a> a ChatGPT plugin that allows travelers to search the carrier’s flights and fares. <\/p>\n

United traded slightly down Wednesday afternoon. Meta (META<\/a>) stock also declined. <\/p>\n

118.37 -2.19 (-1.82%) <\/p>\n

At close: November 11 at 4:00:00 PM EST <\/p>\n

118.12 -0.25 (-0.21%) <\/p>\n

After hours: November 11 at 6:11:59 PM EST <\/p>\n

United Airlines said in a press release that it fears that AI agents could expose sensitive information<\/a> as well as potentially violate Federal Aviation Administration and Department of Transportation rules. <\/p>\n

At the same time, airlines have recently found themselves in hot water over AI-powered surveillance pricing. In October, the Federal Trade Commission ordered United Airlines, Delta Air Lines (DAL<\/a>), JetBlue Airways (JBLU<\/a>), and six other major carriers to turn over information on how AI tools influence individual fare pricing and how customer data is used. <\/p>\n

Relatedly, many people feel that AI offers inadequate customer service. A new “Consumer Patience Index<\/a>” poll found that when ranking frustrating support experiences, customers rated “talking to a bot that doesn’t understand me” as the biggest pain point, and 61.2% say they have yelled at automation in order to be \u2028routed to a human faster. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AI agents just got denied boarding at United Airlines (UAL). Ahead of holiday travel, the airline company is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":914150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[5097,182,181,507,28,122,101,939,2993,2994,32455,2995,932,32456,20112,147,9323,1170,1666,6480,2996,2997,923,19533,3733,74,32457],"class_list":["post-914149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-401k","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-business","tag-business-news","tag-economy","tag-finance","tag-financial-information","tag-investing","tag-investment-tools","tag-investor","tag-market-news","tag-mortgage","tag-mutual-funds","tag-personal-finance","tag-quote","tag-real-estate","tag-retirement","tag-stock","tag-stock-research","tag-stock-valuation","tag-stocks","tag-suze-orman","tag-tax","tag-technology","tag-track-portfolio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=914149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/914150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=914149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=914149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=914149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}