DOT's SMART AI Tool Rerouted 110 Flights at Three Washington-Area Airports; Democrats Seek Pause
Why It MattersAirline executives back the AI tool while lawmakers seek a pause, so a nationwide expansion will face scrutiny over controller training and workforce rebuilding as a prerequisite.
The Department of Transportation rolled out an AI tool called SMART (Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories) last month to assist air traffic controllers at three Washington-area airports. The tool is still in its initial deployment stage but has helped reroute 110 flights, saving up to 30 minutes and 56 gallons of fuel per flight and benefiting 14,644 passengers. Roughly 44,000 to 45,000 flights take off across the US each day.
SMART collates data from 200 different streams, including weather, flight paths and traffic flow, and produces reports intended to pre-empt disruptions. It was developed with air traffic data analytics firm Air Space Intelligence (ASI). Rebecca Guy, the FAA's acting chief technology officer, said the aim is to get ahead of issues and solve them before they become problems, and described it as a first step in upgrading flight command center systems that often rely on paper maps of routes and static datasets such as weather, departure times and arrival times.
The DOT says aviation specialists monitor the system, identify where congestion or bad weather could cause backups and relay that information to air traffic controllers. The system cannot change anything itself, and controllers decide whether to act. One example is recommending that a plane leave five minutes earlier to avoid inclement weather. The DOT plans to expand the tool nationwide in the coming months.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Don Beyer have called for a pause, citing concerns about testing and training and referencing an Anthropic AI system that created fake identities to deceive humans, although SMART does not rely on bots and was built by a different developer. Their letter says controllers were not properly trained on the system and that SMART is no substitute for rebuilding the human air traffic controller workforce. The DOT responds that controllers do not currently interact with the tool directly.
CEOs of major airlines including American, Delta, United and Southwest have publicly applauded the effort. Airlines for America CEO and President Chris Sununu said the initiative is making sure the industry will have the best flight management tools.
