FAA expands AI air-traffic advice to all U.S. airspace

On Nov. 10, 2026, the Federal Aviation Administration announced it has expanded its AI-based SMART tool to all 22 U.S. air route traffic control centers nationwide. The agency posted the announcement that day, saying, “the FAA will now use SMART in the airspace of all 22 centers across the country.” The move extends a tool that had been operating in limited form since September, and the FAA had already deployed the system at some airports before the nationwide expansion.

The Federal Aviation Administration says SMART is designed to propose schedules, select the best flight routes, and set the arrival order for aircraft. It processes 200 data streams covering weather, flight routes, traffic volume, and controller staffing. Planners use the system to identify places where demand might exceed capacity and reroute flights before congestion builds. The FAA describes SMART as running on cloud technology, and it characterizes the tool’s output as advisory rather than directive.

Limited operations began on Sept. 21, 2026, in the Washington, D.C., airspace, covering flights at Reagan National (DCA), Washington Dulles (IAD), and Baltimore/Washington International (BWI) airports. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford unveiled the system that day. In the roughly seven weeks since, the FAA says SMART has rerouted 180 flights, saving an average of 10 minutes per rerouted flight and almost 80 gallons of fuel each.

The Federal Aviation Administration has not released details on passenger flights. It gave The Dallas Morning News one example of a cargo plane reroute that saved time, but provided no specifics about passenger operations. The system cost $875 million to develop, according to the FAA.

FAA specialists based in Washington validate the tool’s suggestions before they reach air traffic control facilities. The validated recommendations go to the Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Warrenton, Virginia, which passes them to the facilities responsible for the affected airspace.

The Federal Aviation Administration says local managers at those facilities decide whether to act on the scheduling recommendations, and controllers make the final decision on whether to follow SMART’s suggestions. In practice, a recommendation can be validated in Washington, relayed through Warrenton, and still be declined by a local manager or a controller on the floor.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said there is “always going to be a human that manages the airspace in America.” The FAA stated that the software used to manage routes will have no impact on aviation safety.

Airline executives have backed the nationwide deployment. American Airlines CEO Robert Isom has praised the tool. Industry officials were relieved to learn that SMART will generate alternative route information passed through the FAA’s existing systems and procedures, rather than injecting itself directly into daily air traffic control operations. One airline industry official called it a big relief that the system does not enter daily operations, though the same official expressed some trepidation over the feasibility of integration if the system did.

Airlines had earlier warned the tool might cancel or reroute flights unnecessarily by overcompensating for predicted delays, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. In mid-September, Politico reported that airlines had stopped panicking after Duffy and FAA officials said the full rollout would follow only a 90-day test period. Yet the nationwide expansion arrived well before the 90-day window would have closed, and the reason the FAA is moving faster than its own stated test timetable is unclear. The agency has not publicly explained the acceleration.

The rollout has drawn criticism from the controllers’ union. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association said it was not involved in SMART’s design, testing or implementation. Because of that exclusion, the union said it cannot speak to the system’s effect on the air traffic control workforce. The union’s statement puts a sharp edge under the agency’s claim that controllers retain the final say: if the people who would use the tool had no hand in building it, the question of whether the recommendations are genuinely advisory – or whether the human decision is genuine – goes unanswered.

The exclusion has also drawn attention from Congress. Over two dozen lawmakers demanded a pause in the Washington-area deployment. In October, they sought an explanation from the FAA on how it tested SMART for safety and trained staff to use it. Those questions about safety testing and training went unanswered in the Nov. 10 update announcing the nationwide expansion.

A group of House Democrats requested that the Government Accountability Office evaluate SMART’s rollout, its performance measures and its safety risk oversight. House Democrats wrote that the frontline aviation safety workforce had little to no input into SMART’s development and received limited training and information during deployment. They said the use of AI within SMART raises serious questions about its reliability, safety benefits, potential interference with controller decision-making and potential hallucination of safety-critical information.

The FAA plans to phase out the 55-year-old floppy disk format by 2028, a separate modernization effort that underscores how much of the agency’s infrastructure still predates the current generation of computing.