Personally I would rather limit all price discriminations to a simple predictable and publicly inspectable customizable formulae. It's like the finance guys who exalt the virtues of increased liquidity but that disappears the moment you try to use it. Similar for the extra complexity for price discovery.

Seems like that would be problematic for progressive tax rates.

Honestly it’s pretty clever. “Wealth is a protected class” would fit right in with the modern right-wing rhetoric, continuing the inversion theme already established with “actually whites are the targets of racism” and “actually Christians are persecuted in the West”, etc.

The article notes that they might require you to be logged in to your DeltaAir account to see the (good?) prices for routes.

I’m curious what this will do to route planning tools, resellers and travel agents. Ones I can think of would be Booking.com or Kayak — you couldn’t even see price info? That would be a radical change.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/17/vladimir-putin...

Use packages like selenium, VPN providers could offer more turn-key w/ advances features as a value add SaaS.

The idea is, you're not blocking the pricing models, you're feeding them a perfectly consistent bottom-tier consumer profile. They don't love you as a customer, but they'll take you, they know you're a reliable buyer for the right price. You just never buy unless it's at the absolute floor. There's be the need for regular cat & mouse tactice, like with VPN & IP blocking those trying to get around geo blackouts.

a) Use headless Selenium automation to simulate a stable consumer footprint: flight searches, cart abandonment, loyalty program logins, price comparisons.

b) Enrichment networks (LiveRamp, Oracle, etc.) pick up your cookies, browsing behavior, email patterns, so give them exactly what they want: budget travel habits, low-income signals, and no upsell interest.

c) Keep a consistent synthetic persona: same email, same billing ZIP, same bargain behavior, every time. Never act like a deal hunter, just a reluctant flyer with no flexibility.

d) Optional: pair it with a residential-looking PO box address ++ curated device fingerprint (e.g., Firefox on Win10, 1366x768). Avoid exit nodes from sketchy VPNs or known scraper IP pools. Prepaid credit cards.

e) You're not avoiding targeting, you're training the model. Over time, it learns: this user only converts at the floor. That's what it shows you.

Too much effort? Bundle it: Again, imagine a VPN-style service that quietly builds your fake profile over weeks using open-source tools. Privacy meets price manipulation.

I dunno, ticket reselling might not be strictly better, but it seems unlikely to be worse and at the very least it would be nice to have the option of selling your ticket if your plans change. As it is, you generally either have to pay extra in advance for that privilege, or just eat the loss. Either way it's great for the airlines, therefore not great for consumers.