United restricts unauthorized AI travel agents across booking channels

Scott Kirby, chief executive of United and its holding company since May 2020 and previously president of both United and American Airlines, brings years of airline commercial leadership to that debate. His roles are documented in the company’s 2025 annual filing. The secondary account, citing earlier reporting of a Chicago event on November 10, quotes him saying: “To be honest, I don't want to create another middleman.”

The holding company reported $2.109 billion in distribution expenses for 2025, down from $2.231 billion in 2024. Those costs include credit-card fees, travel-agency and other commissions, and booking fees paid to global distribution systems. The filing attributes the $122 million, or 5.5%, decline primarily to a change in sales-channel mix and revised assumptions for credit-card fees. These are total distribution costs, not a measure of AI-agent expenses or savings from the new policy.

United already sells through its own website and app, traditional and online travel agencies, and other intermediaries. Its filing describes investment in New Distribution Capability, technology for marketing and selling airline products, alongside its direct channels. United says those channels can improve how it presents offers and reduce distribution costs; some legacy distribution technology can be more expensive and less capable. AI agents would therefore enter an existing contest over sales channels and customer relationships.

The secondary account also says United is seeing little AI-agent booking activity and that its systems can distinguish reservations made by people, conventional agencies and automated assistants. It supplies no booking share or detection-accuracy measure. That leaves the scale of current use and the practical effectiveness of enforcement unquantified.

Company-reported distribution expenses for 2024 and 2025. These totals do not measure AI-agent costs or savings from the new restrictions. Chart: Magica; data: United Airlines Holdings. Source: United Airlines Holdings 2025 Form 10-K.

Other companies draw different boundaries

Other airlines illustrate different degrees of access. The secondary account relays Delta Air Lines’ statement that authenticated AI assistants can complete bookings, with additional safeguards for sensitive transactions such as trips by unaccompanied minors. That is Delta’s stated approach as conveyed through the reporting, rather than evidence that any assistant has unrestricted access.

Southwest Airlines announced on October 6, 2026 that it had launched a plug-in in the AI chatbot ChatGPT for discovering and shopping for its flights. Southwest called it the first step in a phased booking approach. Its announcement describes a route from discovery toward booking options, rather than establishing that an autonomous assistant can complete a ticket purchase. An airline-authorized shopping integration and an outside agent operating a customer’s account are different arrangements.

The retailer Amazon has asserted a similar right to decide whether to participate. In a November 4, 2025 statement, it said third-party purchasing applications should respect service providers’ participation decisions and that it had repeatedly asked Perplexity to remove Amazon from Comet, Perplexity’s agentic application. That establishes a precedent for United’s position, not an industry-wide agreement about who should control customer-delegated access.

What would qualify an agent for approval?

United says it does not yet work with any third-party AI agents. Its guidance nevertheless leaves room for standardized integrations with protections for privacy, security, authorization and accountability. The announcement and guidance do not set out a launch date or detailed approval criteria for those integrations.

For existing customers, the immediate boundary is clearer. United says agent bookings made before November 11, 2026 will not be canceled, although travelers should check that they were correctly booked and ticketed. It recommends changing passwords immediately if MileagePlus login information has been shared with a third-party agent and securing accounts after suspected unauthorized purchases or mileage use.

The unresolved decision is whether United will turn its proposed protections into an approved integration, and what permissions and responsibility that arrangement will assign. Published technical requirements, approval terms and evidence of how safeguards perform would make that opening concrete. For now, the airline has specified what unauthorized agents may not do while leaving the terms of future access undefined.

Seedance 2.5 reaches 4K on Runway, Venice and Picsart

ByteDance’s video model is reaching creators through multiple platforms with 30-second 4K output. Posted prices and draft workflows show why the choice of distributor still matters.