FAA SMART AI Air Traffic Tool Goes Nationwide

The FAA started using an AI planning tool on September 21 around three Washington-area airports. On November 10 it said the tool, called SMART, will now cover the airspace of all 22 of its en route air traffic control centers. That is about seven weeks from a limited start to national scope.

It’s short on evidence and long on one figure. Sequence first, then what the agency has and hasn’t shown.

From three airports to every center

In its September 21 announcement the FAA described SMART as a platform that pulls 200 data streams into one view: weather, flight paths, traffic flow and controller staffing. FAA specialists review what it produces. Local leadership at each facility can accept or pass on the scheduling suggestions. SMART “cannot be used to replace the critical role air traffic controllers play or take over control of an aircraft.”

Date	What happened	Source
September 21	Limited start near Reagan National, Dulles and BWI	FAA
September 21	Controllers’ union says it has not been involved in design, testing or implementation	NPR, quoting NATCA
October 9	More than two dozen lawmakers ask the FAA to pause the rollout	AVweb, citing the lawmakers’ letter
Between September and November	Coverage extended to Atlanta, Jacksonville and Miami centers	Ars Technica, citing The Dallas Morning News
November 10	FAA says SMART will be used in all 22 centers	FAA statement, as quoted by Ars Technica

The number the FAA is leaning on

Since September 21, the FAA says, SMART has helped reroute 180 flights, saving an average of 10 minutes and almost 80 gallons of fuel per flight. AVweb and Ars Technica both report those figures as the agency’s. According to Ars, The Dallas Morning News noted that the FAA shared one example (a cargo flight into Dallas-Fort Worth) without naming the flight, and gave no detail on whether passenger traffic was helped.

Airways magazine made a point worth repeating. These numbers describe the flights that were rerouted, not a measured drop in delays across the national system. My read: a tool can look great on the flights it touches and still do little for the average delay, so 180 flights since September 21 tells us less than the headline suggests.

Who has answered what

Per the FAA’s description, SMART is a planning layer. Recommendations go from specialists in Washington to the Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Warrenton, Virginia, then on to individual facilities. Controllers keep responsibility for keeping planes apart.

Airline executives and their trade group have backed it.

Delta CEO Ed Bastian and American’s Robert Isom backed the tool in the September announcement, per Ars Technica. Airlines for America, the industry group, told NPR the tool’s potential “to strengthen safety, increase capacity and improve efficiency” would help travelers directly.

The October 9 letter asked about safety testing and staff training, and about the standards that would have to be met before a national rollout. AVweb says the November 10 announcement did not address those questions. AeroTime says the same. I couldn’t find a published answer from the FAA either, though I only checked the sources listed below.

My read

My read: the gap here is about order of operations, not about whether the tool works. According to the lawmakers’ letter, the FAA had a planned 90-day evaluation period, and then expanded before saying publicly what it found beyond one headline figure. If the 180-flight result is as good as claimed, publishing the method would help the agency, not hurt it.

Dave Riley, a retired controller NPR interviewed in September, said of SMART, “It won’t replace humans. It’ll be another tool in the toolbox.” He also doubted it would fix the staffing shortage; NPR reports the FAA is still thousands of certified controllers short. That’s the right size for this story. A planning aid, spread nationwide, with its safety paper trail still missing. Federal AI oversight elsewhere is mostly voluntary too, as we covered in the White House AI accord post.

Watch for two things: an FAA reply to the lawmakers, and any word on how those 180 flights were chosen.

Sources

The FAA’s November 10 statement itself was quoted via Ars Technica and AVweb; I did not open the statement page directly.