FAA Prepares to Field SMART in Washington in First Operational Deployment

WASHINGTON — The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is preparing to put SMART, its new predictive traffic-planning software, into operational use in the Washington area as soon as Monday, September 21, according to The Wall Street Journal. It would be the system's first operational fielding.

The newspaper reported on September 17 that federal aviation officials were preparing to launch the tool in "one of the nation's busiest corridors", and that it "will first debut in the Washington, D.C., area ahead of a broader nationwide rollout." The Journal attributed the account to government and industry officials, and said the software is expected to help the agency and airlines reduce delays and cancellations and find routes when disruptions scramble traffic.

The FAA had not announced the Washington launch in its newsroom as of September 18, and neither had Air Space Intelligence, the company building the system. What the agency has published is a season rather than a date: initial operations begin in the fall of 2026.

What SMART Does

Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes, and Trajectories, or SMART, "is expected" to not replace the systems controllers use. The FAA's own fact sheet on the program calls it "a cloud-based platform system that enhances existing FAA air traffic management systems," one that gives air traffic control and aircraft operators "a shared, data-driven view of the National Airspace before flights depart."

The agency sets out the mechanism in one sentence: "Using AI, SMART analyzes airline schedules, weather, airport capacity, airspace conditions, and operational constraints to predict traffic flows and identify potential conflicts before they occur." Its reach extends past the gate. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford told a House appropriations subcommittee on September 15 that SMART uses AI to predict congestion and conflicts earlier, "adjusting departure times, routes, and timing at designated points enroute."

SMART sits inside Flow Management Data and Services (FMDS), the platform the FAA selected Air Space Intelligence to build in June. The company says the award covers both systems and is worth US$875m over 12 years.

Airways set out the rollout plan and the capacity problems behind it earlier this month, including Reuters' report that the FAA planned to use SMART first to reschedule flights cancelled by bad weather.

Where the Deployment Lands

POLITICO reported on September 18, citing two industry officials, that SMART will offer advice to air traffic controllers managing flights for "the three airports that serve the nation's capital." The region's three main airports are Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA), Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD) and Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI); POLITICO did not name them individually.

According to outlet, the system will identify alternative routes, such as in bad weather, and send those recommendations from a "SMART center" headquartered at the Transportation Department to an established command center through the FAA's existing processes. From there the information reaches controllers through systems they already use.

The report did not name that command center. FMDS is to become the technological backbone of the FAA's Air Traffic Control System Command Center, the facility that balances national traffic demand against system capacity, which sits in Warrenton, Virginia, with the FAA's Potomac Terminal Radar Approach Control co-located alongside it.

The only published altitude boundary dates from June. Steve Fulton, an FAA senior certification advisor, described the initial deployment as a "bounded introduction" limited to air traffic at 24,000 ft (7,300 m) and above, CAPA reported, and said the deployment was on track for September. Flying reported the same altitude floor, describing the first fielding as an operational demonstration focused on en route airspace. Both credit Aviation Week, which originated the reporting and sits behind a login wall.

Fulton spoke six days before the contract was awarded. None of the September reporting reviewed here says whether that boundary still holds.

The Limit the FAA Draws

SMART is "a planning layer that works alongside existing FAA systems," the fact sheet says, and "Air traffic controllers remain responsible for keeping aircraft safely separated. SMART helps them do that."

CAPA reported Fulton in June as calling the software an enhancement for air traffic controllers, not a replacement for them. An industry official told POLITICO the tool will not create any new procedures for controllers. Neither the fact sheet, the testimony nor those accounts describes SMART issuing clearances, separating aircraft or operating without a controller in the loop.

A 90-Day Test Without Published Metrics

Bedford told POLITICO the rollout's roughly 90-day first phase will focus mainly on testing the system and building airlines' confidence in its predictions. On September 15, he said the FAA will work with airlines to examine specific flights, compare flight paths and assess how accurately SMART's predictive analytics perform, and his hope, POLITICO reported, is to roll the tool out more widely after the test. FAA spokesperson Hannah Walden told the publication the agency is "taking a slow, methodical approach to the rollout." Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy put it the same day at a National Artificial Intelligence Association talk in Washington: "We have to do a slow roll into the airspace."

The fact sheet sets the program's goal as "zero delays at the start of the day" and lists reduced fuel burn, improved on-time performance, faster recovery from weather and congestion events and capacity for new airlines, cargo operators and advanced air mobility aircraft.

Those are program claims, not measured results. Neither the fact sheet, the award announcement nor the September 15 testimony reports any measurement of SMART in FAA operational use, and the agency has not published the metrics or baseline its 90-day assessment will use. The figures that would inform the question are ordinary traffic-management statistics: delay minutes, the duration of ground delay programs and ground stops, cancellations, the number of reroutes issued, the fuel burned holding and rerouting, and how often airlines accept what the software recommends.

Airlines have questions of their own. POLITICO reported that carriers had been unclear on matters including whether they could opt out of using the system, and three airline industry officials said the FAA had yet to answer some of those questions in granular detail. Which side gives way when an airline's schedule and the agency's traffic plan diverge is not addressed in the fact sheet, the award announcement or the testimony.