Federal aviation officials on Monday launched SMART—Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes, and Trajectories—at the three main airports serving the Washington area. The Transportation Department says the AI-powered tool is intended to help the FAA and airlines identify problems earlier, reducing delays and cancellations.¹

The rollout begins in one of the country’s most tightly packed air corridors, rather than across the national system. SMART analyzes airline schedules, weather, airport capacity, airspace conditions and other operating constraints to forecast traffic flows and flag potential conflicts before they occur. It is designed to provide airlines, operators and the FAA with a shared operational picture—and, ultimately, more efficient routes and departure times.²

That restraint matters. Philip Mann, a former FAA official and aviation-safety consultant, called a limited launch “the right call,” arguing that “every cut in scope shrinks the unknowns.”² His concern is not a single bad prediction, but deploying a national-scale system with AI components before it has faced real workloads, imperfect data and clear accountability for errors.

Airlines, meanwhile, had reportedly been unsettled by uncertainty around the deployment. Their concerns eased after the FAA said SMART would not alter procedures for controllers or carriers; instead, it would offer alternative-route information through systems already in use.²

The Washington trial is the opening move in an $875 million, 12-year contract with Air Space Intelligence, alongside a broader replacement of aging FAA traffic-management infrastructure. The agency is pitching the platform as an enhancement to existing systems, not an automated substitute for human judgment.³

That distinction is especially sharp amid a longstanding controller shortage and an urgent modernization push. SMART may help the system absorb disruption—but its next expansion will test whether predictive software can relieve pressure without introducing a new kind of risk.