Inc. Magazine
Delta is testing an AI concierge inside its app to tackle the most frustrating part of flying for its patrons. Can we finally make air travel less anxiety inducing?
Delta’s AI Concierge Is Trying to Fix the Worst Thing About Travel. It Just Might Work
Author: Jason Aten
Every company is trying to figure out how to incorporate AI into its product or service. You can’t log into a website without seeing an AI feature. Even news sites are dropping AI summaries at the top of their articles.
Then there are the AI-powered support chatbots, which are mostly a terrible idea. If I go to a website looking for help, I almost never want to talk to a robot. Even if I know that the chatbot is a faster way to solve a lot of problems, I’d still rather talk to a human. Delta, however, figured out what might be the best AI chat tool I’ve seen yet, and it just might solve the worst thing about travel.
Back in January, Delta previewed its AI Concierge feature in the Fly Delta app. I’ve been using the beta version since November, including on a week-long trip to Europe. I used it to check flight status, track bags, and ask all kinds of questions about my trips. I’ve tried to see how far I could push it.
To be completely honest, it doesn’t work—yet. At least, not the way Delta wants it to. And definitely not the way travelers will want to use it. The experience is something that is clearly unfinished, occasionally frustrating, and still one of the most interesting things Delta has built in years.
Look, of all the things AI promises to solve, the one problem I’m genuinely excited about is travel. It’s not that travel is broken in some abstract way, but because the worst parts of it are painfully specific. Everyone understands the frustration of delayed flights and missed connections. No one likes gate changes that appear five minutes before boarding, or bags that don’t appear at all. It’s the feeling that no one, including the airline, has a complete picture of what’s happening to you right now.
That feeling is the worst thing about travel.
Delta clearly thinks so, too. The pitch, last year at CES, was simple and ambitious. This assistant would know everything about your trip. You could talk to it in natural language. It would proactively keep you updated. It could help you change seats, track your bags, and eventually even rebook flights when things go sideways.
In theory, it’s exactly what frequent travelers have wanted for years. One place to go that actually understands your situation. In practice, the beta is… limited.
Right now, Delta’s Concierge lives inside the Fly Delta app. It can answer basic questions about your itinerary and track your bags. That’s about it, for now. Sometimes it’s helpful. Sometimes it tells you what you already know. And sometimes it looks like it should be able to do something, but can’t.
For example, I tried to ask it if there were Comfort Plus seats available on my flight. After about 10 minutes, during which the AI Concierge timed out, it eventually came back with a summary of my flight information and a description of Comfort Plus seats. It did not, however, answer my question.
On another flight, I tried to track my bags–one of the features Delta says should work. It did not. Instead, it asked me to give it the bag tag number, which is something the app should know because that information is presumably a part of my record.
Delta’s AI sits in an uncomfortable middle ground. It looks capable. It sounds confident. It feels like it should be able to change your seat or proactively flag a tight connection. But in many cases, it simply can’t. When you ask it to do something outside its current abilities, it politely punts you to Delta’s website.
That’s a familiar pattern in AI right now. Delta is not unique here, but airlines don’t get the same margin for error as chatbots that write emails. And yet, I don’t think this is a failure. I think it’s an intentional path to figure out one of the hardest technology challenges right now.
The key thing Delta seems to understand is that the problem isn’t alerts. We already have those. Apps like Flighty are fantastic at telling you when your flight is delayed or your gate changes. Push notifications are not the hard part. Context is.
When you’re traveling, you don’t just need information. You want to know what it means. Is this delay going to make me miss my connection? Should I start walking faster? Is it better to switch seats now or wait? Do I need to talk to an agent, or will this resolve itself?
The promise Delta is making is that you’ll be able to simply ask the AI Concierge questions, and it will be able to answer you with the benefit of all of your travel information. Those answers require knowing who you are, where you’re going, what your status is, and what options actually exist right now. Then, the Concierge has to be able to take action on your behalf in a way that’s faster and more reliable than waiting on hold to talk to a person.
What makes the AI Concierge interesting isn’t what it does today. It’s what it could do once Delta connects it more deeply to operations, rebooking logic, and decision-making authority. A concierge that doesn’t just answer questions, but takes responsibility for outcomes. That’s also why this is hard.
Airlines are complex systems. Giving an AI the ability to rebook flights, move passengers, or make tradeoffs isn’t just a technical challenge. It’s an operational and trust problem. If it goes wrong, it could go very wrong.
Delta appears to be taking the smart—if slow route. Right now, the company wants the beta version in the hands of people who will stress test it and provide feedback about what worked and what didn’t. From a customer perspective, that can feel disappointing, if only because the possibilities are transformational. From a systems perspective, it’s probably the only way this works.
I used the Concierge on a flight to Paris, expecting it to feel magical. It didn’t. What it did feel like was a prototype of something airlines have never really pulled off before. For that matter, almost no one has pulled this off yet. That’s why I’m willing to be patient.
If Delta can pull this off, it might just fix the uncertainty of travel in a way that feels natural and effortless. That’s the single best use case of AI. And for the first time in a long time, it feels like an airline is building technology around how people actually experience travel.
That’s why this just might work.
Credits: TCA, LLC.