The FAA has begun operating an artificial intelligence platform at three Washington-area airports, marking the agency's first concrete step toward AI-assisted air traffic management under an $875 million contract.

The software, called Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories (SMART), is now live in the Washington region, affecting Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Washington Dulles International Airport and Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, The New York Times reported. The developer is the AI firm Air Space Intelligence, which holds the government contract to build the system.

SMART consolidates a broad set of operational inputs into a single platform. According to an FAA press release, the tool "centralizes 200 data streams — including weather patterns, flight paths, traffic flow and controller staffing metrics — into one platform." An AI engine analyzes that data to "provide a comprehensive visualization of where planes are going, how much traffic the system can handle and where congestion or weather could cause challenges."

The system runs from the FAA's Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Virginia, where officials disseminate its recommendations to controllers at regional towers and other air traffic facilities. Its role is advisory, not directive. SMART "will not replace human operators or direct any changes to flight routes but merely offer recommendations that controllers can choose to heed or ignore," the Times reported.

The scope of the current deployment is narrow. Officials expect implementation at additional airports later, and when fully integrated nationwide they believe SMART will, in the words of The Wall Street Journal, "act as something like the brains of the nation's air traffic control system."

Controller and airline concerns

Skepticism within the industry persists despite the advisory design. S. Todd Yeary, a former air traffic controller, told NewsNation that open questions remain about "where the system would get its data" and stressed that "controllers must be able to veto its recommendations." His primary concern is AI's tendency to fabricate information: because air traffic data changes continuously, information "fed into a system cannot be assumed to remain reliable." He cited a specific gap — a pilot "requesting VFR flight following service," operating by visual reference rather than instruments, would "not appear in airline schedules, so the on-duty controller must be able to step in."

Airlines raised objections of their own during the rollout. Politico reported "weeks of industry confusion over the FAA's vague description of its much-hyped plans," which eased only after the agency committed to using the tool in a limited way at first. A central question for carriers was "how extensively the AI would be integrated into day-to-day air traffic management."

The airlines' concerns are operational and financial rather than safety-related. After meetings with the FAA, carriers remain wary that SMART could "inject chaos by prompting increases in flight cancellations and reschedulings in the name of preventing aviation bottlenecks and avoiding weather-related delays," Politico reported. That outcome would be a costly disruption for both airlines and passengers. Notably, no airline officials have alleged that the system would compromise safety.

What is deployed versus what is promised

The distinction matters. What is flying today is a recommendation engine at three airports in a single metropolitan region, with human controllers retaining full authority over routes and clearances. What is promised is a nationwide system functioning as the core decision-support layer of US airspace management. The $875 million contract value signals federal commitment to the latter, but the gap between the two remains defined by unresolved questions on data provenance, recommendation override procedures and the system's handling of traffic that never appears in scheduled airline data.

The FAA has framed the Washington rollout as the first stage of a broader deployment. Whether airlines' concerns over cancellation-driven disruption and controllers' data-reliability objections are addressed will likely determine the pace at which SMART expands beyond the three airports now using it.