FAA quietly developing AI-enabled predictive air traffic management system

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The Federal Aviation Administration is quietly developing a new artificial intelligence-powered software tool for air traffic management that could fundamentally change how the U.S. airspace system operates, according to several people familiar with the project. 

Dubbed Strategic Management of Airspace Routing Trajectories (SMART), the stealthy program is being spearheaded personally by Administrator Bryan Bedford who views it as a central pillar of the FAA’s airspace modernization and redesign efforts. Three companies — Palantir, Thales and Airspace Intelligence (ASI) — have been brought in to compete on the initiative, which could be operational in some form as soon as later this year. 

SMART could enable the FAA to plan for bottlenecks and anticipate schedule conflicts before an aircraft even leaves the ground, the familiar people said, a distinct shift from today’s human-centric, reactive ATC structure. 

“We have three companies right now that are working with us on developing software to look at even how flights are managed,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on April 17 at a Semafor event, obliquely acknowledging the effort for the first time. “This software, as they look at the flight paths, won’t see [potential conflicts] 15 minutes before it happens … a controller will get a notice that they could change one of the airplane’s flight paths slightly and they can deconflict it an hour and a half or two hours before the conflict even happens.”

Department of Transportation and FAA officials are expected to provide more details about SMART at a press event currently scheduled for April 21, according to the familiar people.

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