FAA Extends SMART AI Traffic Tool to All 22 US En Route Centers

The Federal Aviation Administration will extend its AI-assisted traffic planning tool to airspace managed by all 22 US air route traffic control centers, overriding more than two dozen lawmakers who demanded a pause in the Washington-area rollout. The agency announced the expansion on November 10, 2026.

The system, Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories (SMART), has already rerouted 180 flights in the Washington area since limited operations began. The FAA reported average savings of 10 minutes and nearly 80 gallons of fuel per rerouted flight.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford unveiled SMART on September 21, 2026. Initial operations covered flights at Reagan National (DCA), Washington Dulles (IAD) and Baltimore/Washington International (BWI) airports.

How the SMART system works

SMART draws on 200 data streams, including weather, flight paths, traffic volumes and controller staffing. The tool helps air traffic planners anticipate where demand could exceed capacity and identify opportunities to reroute flights before congestion builds.

The workflow keeps human judgment at the final decision point. FAA specialists at the SMART center in Washington review the data and send scheduling recommendations to the agency's Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Warrenton, Virginia.

The command center then passes those recommendations to the facilities responsible for the affected airspace. Local managers decide whether to act on them.

What does the expansion change for airlines?

For carriers, the move broadens a rerouting mechanism that has produced measured, if modest, efficiency gains in the Washington region: 10 minutes and roughly 80 gallons of fuel saved per flight in the initial deployment. Extending the tool nationwide means flight-planning and dispatch teams will face AI-informed reroute recommendations across the entire en route environment, not just the three-airport Washington testbed.

Whether the Washington-area savings translate system-wide remains unverified. The FAA has published reroute counts and per-flight averages for one region over roughly seven weeks of operation. It has not disclosed system-wide targets, baseline delay figures or the criteria by which the national expansion will be judged.

Lawmakers' questions remain unanswered

The expansion proceeds amid unresolved congressional scrutiny. In October 2026, more than two dozen lawmakers asked the FAA to explain how it had tested SMART for safety and how it had trained staff to use the system.

The agency's November 10 announcement did not address those questions. The FAA offered no additional detail on safety validation, controller training curricula or the testing methodology behind the tool's deployment.

That silence leaves the congressional letter formally unanswered even as the program's footprint grows more than twenty-fold in scope, from one metropolitan area to the airspace of all 22 en route centers — the facilities that control high-altitude traffic between terminal areas across the continental United States.

A measured claim set against an unmeasured rollout

The FAA's performance claims are narrow and specific: 180 reroutes, 10 minutes saved, 80 gallons of fuel per flight. They cover a single region and a short operating window. The agency has not yet published equivalent data for the national deployment, nor has it said when such data will be available.

The architecture of the system limits its authority. SMART generates recommendations; it does not issue clearances or reroutes directly. Air traffic managers retain discretion at every affected facility, which constrains both the tool's risk profile and its potential gains.

Lawmakers' concerns about testing and training will likely intensify as the tool enters every en route center. The FAA's next disclosure — whether it answers the October letter with safety and training detail, or publishes system-wide performance figures — will determine whether SMART becomes a verified efficiency instrument or a politically contested one.