FAA switches on $875M SMART AI advisor at all 22 traffic centers

The FAA has switched on its AI air-traffic advisor at every air route traffic control center in the country. Ars Technica reports that Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories, or SMART, is now active in the airspace of all 22 centers, extending a pilot that began around Washington on September 21 to the full US system.

The tool was built by Air Space Intelligence under a 12-year, $875 million contract awarded in June. It centralizes over 200 data streams to generate routing and schedule recommendations aimed at clearing congestion before planes leave the ground. FAA specialists in Washington review the data before it is forwarded to the Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Warrenton, Virginia, and local facility leadership at each of the 22 centers then decides whether to accept or decline each suggestion.

Since the September launch, the FAA says SMART "has helped reroute 180 flights, saving an average of 10 minutes and nearly 80 gallons of fuel per flight."

"We can't control the weather, but we can control the decisions that we make to keep airspace open," FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy framed the ambition more broadly, saying SMART would "slash those frustrating delays, reduce stress on air traffic controllers, and lower travel prices."

The rollout was not uncontested. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association told Flying Magazine it was "not involved in the design, testing, or implementation of SMART" and could not speak to its effect on the workforce. House Democrats sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office asking it to review the FAA's implementation strategy, performance metrics, and safety risk management.

The nationwide activation also landed three days before a rare federal ground stop. In a statement, Air Space Intelligence said: "The current ground stop is not based on or a result of the SMART system, any product of ASI or our integration with FAA and ATC." Officials attributed the outage to overloaded switches and routers in the FAA's aging telecommunications infrastructure.