The Talgo train service in Uzbekistan (higher speeds but not true high speed)
Overnight from Turkmenabad to Ashgabat in TurkmenistanThe new Indian train in
Jammu+Kashmir (Jammu Tawi-Katra-Banhal-Srinagar-Baramulla) which has been under
construction for 25 years but the full line just opened early this year
(Katra-Banhal is the spectacular section)Plus an 1800 km cross country trip
from Kolkata to Udaipur. I've ridden over 22,00o km in India over the years.
For some reason Keady has been reluctant to join me
On Wednesday, September 24, 2025 at 01:59:17 AM MST, Dan Solon via Mifnet
<[email protected]> wrote:
This is tangential to the main thread, but as a train dork I am envious of
Hubert's rail journey.Would be interested to read his itinerary.
Daniel Solon
On Wed, Sep 24, 2025 at 8:22 AM Tom Ronell via Mifnet <[email protected]>
wrote:
Welcome to Mifnet, Courtney.
I understand that Dave forwarded to you my explanation of how and why I shared
the report with Mifnet? If not, I can do so, in order that you have "the rest
of the story," as Paul Harvey would say.
Best wishes,
Tom
From: Hubert Horan via Mifnet <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]; David Wardell <[email protected]>; David
Wardell via Mifnet <[email protected]>
CC: Hubert Horan <[email protected]>
Date: 2025-09-23T18:28:43Z
Subject: [Mifnet đź›° 74275] Delta "AI" pricing--reply to Miller
Sorry for delayed response I have been riding trains in Central and South Asia.
I am emailing this response to you at the same time I am posting it on Mifnet
My 19 Sep post was in the context of a Mifnet discussion that began in July
that had been provoked by industry press reports that Glen Hauenstein had told
investors that Delta expected major returns from its ongoing project to have
“artificial intelligence” set prices. My original July post suggested that if
Hauenstein’s claims could be confirmed this could be one of the biggest stories
in aviation, we need to figure out what’s actually going on. The July
discussion focused on three questions:
1. Was the Delta/Fletcherr “AI” project designed to give Delta the ability to
implement first-degree price discrimination (whether implemented now or in the
future) so that individuals making identical pricing requests at the same point
in time might be shown different prices based on Delta’ perceptions of their
price elasticity?
2. What exactly did Hauenstein mean when he said AI would set Delta prices?
What would Large Language Model/Generative AI pricing do differently than
Delta’ longstanding PYM processes? Was Delta expecting “AI” to make marginal
improvements to its longstanding RM function or significantly transform them?
If the latter, what major RM shortcomings would “AI” solve? What totally new
capabilities would “AI price setting” introduce?
3. In order of magnitude terms, were the revenue gains from introducing “AI
pricing” likely to be incremental/useful or huge/competitively powerful? Was
increased revenue from first-degree price discrimination an important part of
the reason for Hauenstein’s optimism with his investors?
Â
Neither Delta’s public statements nor subsequent press coverage provided clear
answers to these questions. Subsequent Delta statements implied they don’t
intend to introduce first-degree price discrimination, but they haven’t ruled
it out in the future and have made no effort to demonstrate that the big gains
Hauenstein is promising investors come from sources other than first-degree
price discrimination. Â Again, the comment from Senator Gallego who thinks
Hauenstein is either lying to his investors (about huge potential gains) or to
Congress (about disavowing first-degree price discrimination).
The subsequent Mifnet discussion recognized that any effort to implement
first-degree price discrimination would be a huge industry issue but would face
a variety of challenges. While we could speculate, no one seemed able to
confidently answer the three questions.
Once Ronell distributed your paper, the question for the Mifnet discussion was
whether it helped answer the three questions. I stand by what I told the Mifnet
on the 19th—no it didn’t, and I provided explanations with direct quotes
justifying that conclusion. Your response not only failed to clarify how you
would answer the three questions but ignored almost all the evidence I
presented demonstrating that you didn’t have clear answers to those questions.
Will the AI project enable first-degree price discrimination? Biggest question
of all. We all know airlines have long had access to lots of “personal
information.” But is the Delta/Fletcherr project designed to change the use
this information so Delta can show different prices to different customers?
Your paper ignored this, and when I highlighted it in my post of the 19th you
ignored it again. Your paper misrepresented public concerns about the use of
anti-competitive market power in order to capture consumer surplus as concerns
about data privacy. Your response ignored my objection that the single quote
from a Georgia TV station you used to represent the backlash to Hauenstein’s
statements similarly misrepresented the industry/public debate over
first-degree price discrimination.
Will AI drive major, dramatic changes to Delta RM, and if so how? No one could
read your paper without missing your Very Strong Implications that this is a
Really Big Deal. Your paper used the words revolution/revolutionary ten times.
Delta/Fletcherr “have begun to automate airline pricing.” As I said on the
19th, any RM function can be improved, but your response ignored my stated
concern that all of the improvements your paper cited sounded like things
airline RM has been doing for years and fall well short of things one could
call revolutionary. Delta airline pricing isn’t currently automated? Airlines
are incapable of implementing their RM models? Airline data isn’t properly
warehoused? I invited you to offer concrete illustrations of major Delta RM
shortcomings that the AI project could fix; your reply failed to offer any,
much less ones that could be considered revolutionary.
Is Delta’s introduction of “AI pricing” something with the potential to
massively increase revenue and disrupt industry competition? No one could read
your paper without missing your Very Strong Implications that this will have
Really Huge Benefits.  Delta/Fletcherr “AI pricing” approach could increase
revenue by 10%, could be higher than 10%, and Delta’ competitors are ceding a
big revenue advantage by failing to adopt the Delta/Fletcherr approach. You
ignored my objection that this potential wasn’t qualified in any way and if
taken at face value would produce the biggest profit gain in industry history.
You then insisted that the existence of uncertainty meant you could ignore my
objection that you hadn’t provided the detailed concrete examples that a
conclusion this powerful would normally warrant or explained why major airlines
like Delta were unable to achieve them in the past.
The AI company claims revenue improvements of 10% due to pricing optimization
from the model. We do not know if Delta is seeing the claimed 10% in their test
cases, but we do know the airline is very, very satisfied with the results."
You were the author of this paper. By endorsing Fletcherr’s specific 10% claim
and Delta’s very satisfied comment you are clearly telling your readers that
you believe gains of this magnitude are highly plausible. Of course Delta
hasn’t publicly committed to specific improvement targets. That fact isn’t
“adding context and nuance”. It is trying to avoid accountability for the
findings and opinions you’ve presented and trying to blow off requests that the
findings and opinions you present be properly substantiated.
Now if Delta/Fletcherr are really focused on creating a first-degree price
discrimination system perhaps adjectives like revolutionary and claims of $5
billion annual revenue gains might become a bit more plausible. The Mifnet (and
a great deal of other industry) discussion is trying to figure out if that’s
what happening. But your paper steadfastly refused to address the issue and
refused to offer any explanation of how revolutionary/multi-billion-dollar
improvements could be possible, if Delta was being fully honest when it told
Congress that it had no intention of introducing first-degree price
discrimination.
There was nothing in your response that claimed that anything I’d said on the
19th was factually wrong or could be challenged using public evidence. Instead
it focused on a lot of emotional points that frankly don’t make much sense.
You were “disappointed” you hadn’t received my comments in advance. Your
published paper was not published at a discussion forum and did not
specifically invite comments. As you said, your paper was offered as a
contribution to industry discussion and that’s how it was taken when Ronell
distributed it to Mifnet participants. Mifnet participants comment on lots of
external comments about industry issues.
I recognize that you were not directly involved when the Mifnet first discussed
the three questions about the Delta/Fletchrr approach, but I don’t see how
anyone could discuss anything related to airline AI pricing without considering
them. You complained that your paper said it wasn’t addressed to experts in
data science but I’m not aware of anyone on the Mifnet who is on the cutting
edge of data science and nothing in my post involved data science issues. Your
complaint of objections coming from people who conflate “artificial
intelligence” with ChatGPT assisted internet searches is strawmanning and a bit
insulting.
You claimed my post was “angry”, “disingenuous” “appears to have been taken
personally, somehow. Perhaps someone forwarded the paper to the poster with a
nasty note?” and was an attack on your integrity. None of these emotional
comments referred to any specific thing I’d written and I found these aspects
of your reply unwarranted and totally unprofessional.
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