WASHINGTON — Air traffic management is getting SMARTer.
DC-area airports have begun deploying an advanced new artificial intelligence-powered air traffic management tool aimed at dramatically reducing flight delays and cancellations as part of a 90-day pilot program.
The new Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories (SMART) tool, which is set to deploy at other airports across the country over the coming months, uses AI to predict weather and other interruptions so that air traffic managers have dynamic data to better coordinate flights.
“You’re going to be on the airfield much faster. Your airline is going to use less fuel,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told reporters. “We are not outsourcing aviation to AI.”
“Humans control the airspace, humans make decisions, but we’re just getting way better technology, way better foresight.”
Duffy jokingly referred to the new tech as “dumb AI,” while trying to emphasize that SMART won’t be making any air traffic management decisions on its own, but will simply give managers better information, including predictive data to make key decisions.
The current system typically relies on old-fashioned paper maps of flight routes and a variety of static datasets, including weather, departure times and arrival times.
SMART will get real-time data. It will be able to project how weather might delay flights and allow managers to give pilots more precise information on how to avoid it, as well as plan for those snarls, for example.
“It’s a traffic separation tool,” Federal Aviation Administration administrator Bryan Bedford explained. “…Now we actually have an opportunity to look holistically at what’s going on in the airspace, not just at this minute, but what we project will be going on in the space over the course of the day.”
In theory, the new system will also reduce air travel costs and reduce carbon emissions due to the increased efficiency.
The new tool was developed by Boston-based Air Space Intelligence, which got an $875 million contract for SMART and another similar system over 12 years. That money came from the $12.5 billion in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to overhaul air traffic infrastructure.
Notably, SMART is not an air traffic control tool. Air traffic managers look at big-picture flight traffic issues, while air traffic controllers are more focused on preventing collisions in real time by helping planes detect other nearby aircraft.
In other words, SMART is a different system from the one that suffered from a busted circuit and caused scores of flight delays in the Northeast on Monday. Bedford noted that “it’s not a safety system” and more of an “advisory” tool.
SMART puts 200 data streams on a unified platform. This includes projections of precise times that planes are expected to land in airports.
If an air traffic manager sees that three flights are projected to land on the same runway, at the same time, they can proactively tell some of the pilots to change their speed or adjust their flight path, for example. This will cut down on the need for pilots to circle around airports and wait for a lane to clear.
“You are about to see the most advanced air traffic management system, not just in America, but it’s the most advanced in the whole world,” Duffy teased to reporters while showing off the new system. “No one has what we are going to show you today.”
SMART is debuting in the DC area in a “limited” mode, meaning that officials will likely be slow to adjust flight.
Officials chose the DC area, which includes Ronald Reagan Washington National, Dulles International, and Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall airports.
“Just think if we improve the traveling experience for members of Congress, how much … more money [we’ll get] to finish the job,” Duffy told The Post when asked about why they selected the DC area.
Duffy anticipates that there won’t be a dramatic change in experience by Christmas, but believes it’s possible that the expected reduction in delays and cancellations could kick in by next summer.
