The Federal Aviation Administration is preparing to put artificial intelligence into one of aviation’s most pressured jobs: anticipating where aircraft will bottleneck before controllers must react.

The agency’s $875 million, 12-year contract with Boston-based Air Space Intelligence covers SMART—Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes, and Trajectories—and a replacement flow-management data system. SMART is designed to weigh airline schedules, weather, airport capacity and airspace conditions, forecasting traffic flows and flagging potential conflicts. The FAA plans to begin in the Washington area before extending it nationally. ¹

That first step matters. The airspace around Washington’s three major airports is among the country’s most complex, yet the system is being presented as an advisory layer rather than an automated replacement for controllers. After weeks of reported industry confusion, airline concerns eased when the FAA said SMART would not alter controller or airline procedures; it would supply alternative-route information through existing systems. ¹

Philip Mann, a former FAA official and aviation-safety consultant, calls the limited launch the “right call.” “Every cut in scope shrinks the unknowns,” he said, arguing that SMART’s challenge is not one prediction but deploying an AI-linked system at national scale. ¹

His caution goes beyond the software. Mann says the next expansion should depend on evidence from real-world workloads and degraded data, plus “a written answer to who owns the outcome when a prediction is wrong.” ¹

The timing sharpens that concern. SMART arrives amid a long-running controller shortage and a broader FAA modernization drive to replace aging radars, communications lines and voice systems. The agency has described the platform as a cloud-based enhancement to existing air-traffic-management tools, part of its effort to help controllers work more safely and efficiently rather than supplant them. ²

The stakes were brutally underscored on January 29, 2025, when a Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines jet collided near Reagan National Airport, killing 67 people; investigators cited tower understaffing among the causal factors. ¹

SMART may improve the shared picture of congestion. It cannot, by itself, repair the people and infrastructure behind it.

[1] FAA tees up $875M AI tool to help manage air traffic congestion — “Every cut in scope shrinks the unknowns.”

[2] The FAA's Plan to Fix Air Traffic? $875M Worth of AI — SMART is described as “a cloud-based platform system that enhances existing FAA air traffic management systems.”