Major US Airline Considers Selling Passenger Information to Advertisers: Report
An ominous new report from the Wall Street Journal might have travelers reconsidering their holiday plans — particularly if they’re flying with United Airlines.
The report, which dropped on Thanksgiving Eve, highlighted two of the most prevalent problems of an increasingly digital age: Privacy and data.
The Journal reported that United is considering “using passenger data to sell targeted ads.”
From the outset of the report, the news outlet noted that United’s commodification of customer data is just the latest in “a growing number of companies trying to tap their troves of user data for advertising purposes.”
As to how this may look like to an outside observer, it doesn’t sound particularly aggressive or intrusive.
According to data viewed by the Journal, this data sale could manifest in the following way: “If [United] decides to leverage passenger information for advertising purposes, it might make it possible for an advertiser — such as an entertainment company — to recommend one of its movies to a passenger who United knows occasionally vacations near the company’s theme parks and recently redeemed miles for merchandise from that company.”
Other ways in which this data could be used could include seeing targeted ads on in-flight entertainment, or targeted ads when customers use the airline app to book tickets and check in.
As is often the case for this burgeoning “retail media” advertising business, the actual description of the end result doesn’t sound all too intrusive.
(Additionally, United executives are planning on giving customers the ability to opt out of said data collection.)
Despite the seeming innocuousness of it all, if the reaction on social media is anything to go by, it appears prospective travelers are quite divided on United’s potential new venture.
Some X users are outright telling people not to fly United and not to use the company’s apps due to the potential privacy concerns:
Don’t fly @united and never install an airline’s app. https://t.co/L3StXKi8G5
— Rollin Reisinger (@RollinReisinger) November 22, 2023
Other X users thought that this was a no-brainer move for the airline, and were wondering why it took so long for United to get into the retail media advertising game:
100% obvious move. all airlines will follow. airplanes are basically an efficient way to gather a captive, wealthy, personally identifiable audience.
what took them so long to do this?
“United Airlines Weighs Using Passenger Data to Sell Targeted Ads”https://t.co/aYEuwabkcL
— Quinn Slack (@sqs) November 22, 2023
Other responses on social media largely fall between those two opposites. There are customers who think this is no big deal at all, and other customers who are mortified that their personal data is being sold.
For United, this report from the Journal is just the latest in a long line of massive headaches that have afflicted one of the largest airlines in the country (per the news outlet, United flew 148 million passengers in 2022) in just the last few years.
Apart from the usual assortment of complaints that any major airline will grapple with, United has had to deal with mass layoffs, vaccine mandates being halted and faulty parts on planes in the last three years alone.
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