Many MindedAn AI advisor for flight routing now covers all 22 US control centers
The FAA announced on November 10 that SMART, an AI advisory tool for managing air traffic flow, will operate across the airspace of all 22 air traffic control centers in the country. The tool is priced at $875 million. It first went live over the Washington, DC region on September 21, then spread to centers in Atlanta, Jacksonville and Miami before the nationwide step.
SMART runs in the cloud. It combines weather patterns, flight paths, traffic flow and controller staffing figures to predict traffic patterns. From that it recommends schedules, identifies optimal routes and determines the best arrival order. A team of FAA specialists in DC validates each recommendation before it goes to air traffic facilities. The FAA says the tool cannot replace controllers or take control of aircraft, and local controllers can accept or reject what it suggests.
The FAA says SMART has helped reroute 180 flights since the DC launch, saving an average of 10 minutes and nearly 80 gallons of fuel per rerouted flight. If those figures hold at scale, the gain is less delay, lower fuel burn and a more dependable way to move people and cargo through crowded skies. Both Delta's and American Airlines' chief executives backed the tool at the September announcement.
The caveats are significant. The savings numbers are the FAA's own and have not been independently verified. The sample of 180 flights is small next to national traffic. The FAA's one public example was an unnamed cargo flight into Dallas-Fort Worth, and it has not shared SMART's effect on passenger flights. The controllers' union, representing more than 15,000 members, says it was not consulted on design, testing or rollout, and it says it cannot speak to the effect on the workforce. Watch for independent delay data and for passenger-flight results.
Source: Ars Technica