United Airlines blocks personal AI assistants from purchasing flight tickets

United Airlines is updating its policies to block personal AI agents from booking flights across its website, flight aggregators, and third-party travel agencies. The carrier warned that handing login credentials or payment information to automated tools could expose sensitive user data and lead to unintended purchases, unauthorized account edits, or compromised MileagePlus miles. While artificial intelligence agents may still surface United flight options to users, they are barred from finalizing reservations. [2][3]

The carrier also pointed to regulatory hurdles, arguing that automated bookings could clash with Department of Transportation and Federal Aviation Administration rules. Speaking at an event, United Chief Executive Scott Kirby expressed reluctance toward agentic commerce, saying he does not want to introduce another middleman between the airline and its travelers. [2][3]

United joins firms like JPMorgan Chase and Amazon in resisting autonomous bots, taking a starkly different approach from Southwest Airlines, which launched a ChatGPT plugin for reservations. The restrictions arrive as automated purchasing remains rare among mainstream consumers; The Wall Street Journal reported that United has observed few agent booking attempts, while Uber handled just 500 Uber Eats orders and four rides via AI agents out of 320 million Halloween-week trips and deliveries. [2][3]