The Transportation Department said Monday that it and the FAA began rolling out SMART, an AI-based program intended to identify and mitigate potential conflicts in the National Airspace System weeks before they occur.
But the union representing tens of thousands of American air traffic controllers told FLYING that it has had no involvement in the system’s development and initial deployment.
DOT and FAA officials have touted SMART (Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories) as the crux of their multibillion-dollar effort to modernize the nation’s ATC system. They said Monday that the system will synthesize information from hundreds of data streams and use it to make recommendations to controllers, which they could accept or decline.
The DOT’s announcement positions SMART as an enabler of fewer disruptions, more predictable operations, and optimized routing, which could lower ticket prices. However, the National Air Traffic Controllers Union (NATCA) said it has not been “involved in the design, testing, or implementation of SMART and therefore cannot speak to its effect on the air traffic control workforce.”
“NATCA believes any new technology should complement and not replace the experience, training, and professional judgment of air traffic controllers who are responsible for the safety of the National Airspace System,” the union said in a statement.
The FAA and NATCA are contending with a shortage of thousands of certified professional controllers (CPCs), though they disagree on the exact figure. A few months ago, NATCA said it was similarly left out of the agency’s updated ATC staffing blueprint, which targets a headcount of 12,563 CPCs—thousands less than the previous goal of 14,633. In the past, the FAA has calculated targeted headcount with input from NATCA.
Airlines, by contrast, have been heavily involved in SMART’s rollout. In a statement Monday, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said the carrier is “actively engaged in the development process.” American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said the airline is “working closely with the FAA on…programs like SMART.”
The New York Times over the weekend reported that SMART is rolling out to the facilities that manage traffic for Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (KDCA), Dulles International Airport (KIAD), and Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (KBWI). Per the Times, it will initially manage only same-day delays rather than identify conflicts days or weeks into the future.
What We Know About SMART
SMART was first announced by federal officials in April, and DOT Secretary Sean Duffy later said a “portion” of the system was targeted to debut in September.
The DOT on Monday described the system as a “cutting-edge tool” that will centralize weather patterns, flight paths, traffic flow, controller staffing levels, and other data to “provide a comprehensive visualization of where planes are going, how much traffic the system can handle, and where congestion or weather could cause challenges.”
The idea is that aviation stakeholders could use the system to identify future issues and accept its recommendations long before conflict arises. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said it will do this “all while maintaining our gold standard of safety.”
For example, SMART could identify when demand for airspace exceeds an airport’s capacity and offer scheduling recommendations. These would be reviewed by FAA staff and delivered to ATCs, who could choose whether to accept them.
An executive of Thales—which was snubbed for the 12-year, $875 million SMART contract in favor of startup Air Space Intelligence (ASI)—told FLYING in April that the system would not assume safety-critical functions. Instead, it would “look across the NAS to see which sectors of the airspace may be overloaded throughout the course of the day” and “rebalance traffic.”
NATCA president Nick Daniels similarly said that SMART, as he understands it, is “about preplanning, not about somehow separating airplanes.” Daniels described the union as a “partner” on SMART but added that “we should remain skeptics until it’s actually in our hands.”
“Humans will separate airplanes,” he said. “What we haven’t had is a system that helps us manage the [NAS] before the day even begins.”
Bedford in April said the system would manage trajectories for 55,000 daily IFR flights and eliminate “gridlock” before airlines publish schedules and sell tickets.
More information emerged in June. According to the DOT’s announcement of ASI’s contract, SMART will mitigate potential conflicts “days, weeks, and even months in advance.” ASI CEO Phillip Buckendorf added that it will continually analyze airline schedules, weather, airport capacity, airspace conditions, and operational constraints.
The week before, Aviation Week reported that Steve Fulton, an FAA senior certification adviser and technical pilot, compared SMART to the agency’s trajectory-based operations (TBO) concept and said it would deconflict “projected trajectories from each aircraft” to provide updated arrival times.
What’s Next?
The DOT said Monday that it began using SMART in a “limited mode…in the airspace around Washington, D.C.,” with “plans to gradually expand it to other parts of the country” in stages over the next few months. It partnered with ASI to build what it called a “state-of-the-art air traffic center” for managing the rollout.
Aviation Week reported that Fulton said the early operational demonstrations would focus on en route airspace 24,000 feet and above. Duffy in August said the FAA would fully deploy SMART by spring 2027 and that it would “slow-roll different aspects” rather than deploy it all at once. He estimated the project’s cost at around $10 billion.
Bedford added that broader efforts to modernize the ATC system with new and upgraded technologies and facilities would “not be successful” unless SMART is rolled out in tandem.
“We can’t control the weather, but we can control the decisions that we make to keep airspace open, or only close airspace when we absolutely have to,” Bedford said. “The primary mission of the air traffic organization is to keep things separated. None of that’s changing…It’s going to create more safe capacity to stop the traffic jams on the airports and get flights moving.”
Despite the administrator’s assurances, not everybody was on the same page leading up to Monday’s rollout.
Politico, citing “multiple people familiar with the situation,” reported that airline industry officials were panicking about the launch in the months leading up to it, privately holding concerns about the AI’s maturity and level of integration. Feelings shifted after a meeting with Bedford earlier this month, during which the FAA apparently confirmed plans to scale back what it had intended to be a much larger rollout.
The Wall Street Journal, which was first to report SMART’s planned deployment Monday, similarly reported that the launch is smaller than what officials had previously anticipated.
“We’re just in the initial stages, but it’s one of the most exciting and bold initiatives taken on by the FAA in decades,” Chris Sununu, president and CEO of Airlines for America, said Monday.
Sununu in June said airlines were “coordinating closely” with the FAA on SMART’s launch.
However, Politico reported that questions remain about how exactly SMART will work, and whether it will be effective. The outlet said that Bedford hopes to roll the system out more widely after about 90 days of testing, during which carriers will determine the reliability of its recommendations.
“If it works as we think it can, it will do more to reduce delays and cancellations than anything that’s happened in decades,” said United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby in a statement Monday.