FAA Expands AI Flight Planner SMART to All 22 En Route Centers

The Federal Aviation Administration is extending an AI planning system to the airspace of all 22 of its en route centers, seven weeks after the tool went live in the Washington region. The system is part of a 12-year, $875 million bet that software can spot congestion and steer flights around it before they leave the gate.

The FAA said Tuesday that SMART — short for Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories — would expand from the Washington region to all 22 centers "to reduce delays, reduce fuel consumption and improve the travel experience for the flying public." The tool first went live on Sept. 21 for flights at Reagan National, Dulles and Baltimore/Washington. What started as a regional trial is set to become a planning layer for the entire national airspace system.

The stakes are straightforward. Air traffic congestion costs airlines fuel, money and schedule reliability, and the FAA has committed nearly a billion dollars over 12 years to the premise that AI can catch problems earlier than human planners working with older tools.

What are the early results?

The numbers so far come from the agency itself. Since Sept. 21, the FAA said, SMART has helped reroute 180 flights and saved an average of 10 minutes and almost 80 gallons of fuel per flight.

The Transportation Department gave The Dallas Morning News one concrete example: a cargo flight from Tampa that reached Dallas-Fort Worth 12 minutes early on a shorter route SMART suggested. The paper noted that the department didn't say when the flight happened or how often the tool had helped passenger traffic there.

That gap matters. The public record currently consists of the FAA's own count of 180 rerouted flights, without independent verification or detail on how often the system's advice was taken. The first results from all 22 centers will test whether the numbers hold at national scale.

Is SMART a planner or a controller?

The FAA describes SMART as a cloud-based system that pulls in 200 data streams — including weather, flight paths, traffic flow and controller staffing — into one platform. Its fact sheet says the system uses AI to "predict traffic flows and identify potential conflicts before they occur."

People stay in the loop at each step. Specialists at a SMART center in Washington check the output and pass scheduling recommendations to the agency's command center in Warrenton, Va., which sends them to local facilities. Leaders there can take the advice or pass on it.

The agency has drawn a hard line on autonomy. When the system launched, the FAA said in a September release that SMART "cannot be used to replace the critical role air traffic controllers play or take over control of an aircraft."

Who built it, and how fast did it move?

The contractor is Air Space Intelligence, which goes by ASI. It won the work in June. The deal covers SMART and the Flow Management Data and Services platform, which the FAA calls the future technological backbone of the traffic flow management systems that run its command center.

ASI is not a household name in defense contracting. NPR described it as a relatively small company that had built AI-assisted dispatch software for Alaska Airlines and other carriers.

The government isn't paying for a product built from scratch, according to ASI. "We have invested nearly $100 million of our own resources to develop a platform that is operational today," Bernard Asare, ASI's president of civil aviation, said when the award was announced. ASI said the two systems would be deployed over the next 12 to 24 months.

The rollout has moved faster than that window suggested. The FAA began validating SMART at its Atlanta, Jacksonville and Miami centers in October, according to Fox News Digital, and announced the nationwide expansion less than five months after the June award.

The timeline in full:

• June: ASI wins the contract covering SMART and the Flow Management Data and Services platform.
• Sept. 21: SMART goes live for flights at Reagan National, Dulles and Baltimore/Washington.
• October: Validation begins at the Atlanta, Jacksonville and Miami centers.
• Tuesday: The FAA announces expansion to all 22 en route centers.

What do airlines and controllers say?

Airline CEOs backed the program from the start, with varying enthusiasm.

"If it works as we think it can, it will do more to reduce delays and cancellations than anything that's happened in decades," United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said in the FAA's September release.

American Airlines CEO Robert Isom was more measured in the same document, saying programs like SMART will help travelers "when done thoughtfully and methodically."

Air traffic controllers had less say in the system. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association, which has more than 15,000 members, told Flying magazine it was not involved in the "design, testing, or implementation of SMART and therefore cannot speak to its effect on the air traffic control workforce," Ars Technica reported.

Lawmakers have also pressed for detail. More than two dozen asked the FAA in October to explain how it had tested SMART for safety and trained staff to use it. The agency's Tuesday update didn't address those questions, AeroTime noted.

What happened with the ground stop?

The system drew extra attention Friday, when a communications failure at en route centers led to a nationwide ground stop. ASI moved to distance itself from the incident, saying on X that the stop "is not based on or a result of the SMART system, any product of ASI or our integration with FAA and ATC."

The episode underscored a separate reality of the FAA's infrastructure. The agency's hardware is being replaced on its own track, down to the floppy drives some facilities still use. SMART is a planning layer sitting on top of aging systems, not a replacement for them.

What comes next?

The FAA's fact sheet sets a blunt target for the software: "zero delays at the start of the day."

That is an ambitious bar for a system whose public evidence so far is 180 rerouted flights and one detailed anecdote about a cargo plane landing 12 minutes early in Dallas-Fort Worth. The expansion to all 22 centers, less than five months after the contract award, puts the burden on ASI's software to show it can deliver at national scale what United's Kirby and American's Isom were promised in September — while the FAA still owes lawmakers answers on safety testing and workforce training.