FAA Turns to AI With $875 Million Smart Air Traffic Management Program

The Federal Aviation Administration is preparing to deploy an AI-powered air traffic management system called Smart, a $875 million program designed to help controllers anticipate congestion, manage flight routes and identify potential conflicts before they develop.

Smart, short for Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories, is being developed by Air Space Intelligence and will be introduced first in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area before expanding to other regions.

The FAA describes the software as a cloud-based platform that works alongside its existing air traffic management systems. According to the agency, Smart will use artificial intelligence to analyze airline schedules, weather, airport capacity, airspace conditions and other operational limits.

The goal is to give controllers a clearer view of how traffic is likely to develop and flag issues earlier, potentially making it easier to adjust routes and workloads before problems build.

The government is expected to spend $875 million on the system over 12 years.

The investment comes as the FAA continues to contend with a nationwide shortage of air traffic controllers. The causes of the staffing gap are varied, and the agency has been looking at both hiring and technology as part of its response.

Earlier this year, the FAA announced a new recruitment plan that it said was intended to address the long-running shortage. The agency is also pursuing a broader modernization effort for the country’s aging air traffic infrastructure.

Smart adds an AI layer to that work. Rather than replacing controllers, the system is designed to support their decision-making by processing multiple sources of operational data and predicting where traffic problems could emerge.

The Washington-area rollout will provide the first test of how the platform performs within the FAA’s existing operations before the agency expands it more widely.

This analysis is based on reporting from TechCrunch.

Image courtesy of Unsplash.

This article was generated with AI assistance and reviewed for accuracy and quality.