Overview
- The Department of Transportation and FAA began a limited rollout Monday, Sept. 21, 2026, of the Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories (SMART) at Reagan National, Dulles and BWI, with AI recommendations issued from the FAA Command Center in Warrenton.
- SMART uses predictive AI on a new Flow Management Data and Services backbone to analyze about 200 data streams such as airline schedules, weather, airport capacity and staffing in order to forecast traffic flows and surface recommended routing or schedule changes.
- FAA leaders say the tool is advisory and human controllers retain final authority, but the National Air Traffic Controllers Association says controllers were not involved in design or testing and has refused to endorse the program.
- The rollout is a constrained pilot reported to run roughly 90 days, and the same day telecom outages from a fiber cut plus a GAO audit flagging spectrum and data‑security gaps highlighted remaining resilience and infrastructure risks.
- The DOT awarded a roughly $875 million, 12‑year contract to Air Space Intelligence to build SMART as part of a broader $12.5 billion modernization plan, a move that could cut delays and fuel burn if training, data integrity and network upgrades keep pace.