The Federal Aviation Administration is preparing to debut its new artificial intelligence tool, Strategic Management of Airspace Routing Trajectories, or SMART, in coming days at the three airports that serve Washington, according to two industry officials. The first phase is expected to run for about 90 days and focus on testing, airline confidence, and whether the system performs as expected.
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said the agency wants to work with airlines to examine specific flights, compare flight paths, and assess how accurately SMART’s predictive analytics perform. He also said the tool will focus in part on forecasting where weather systems are headed, rather than only looking at where they are in real time.
That narrower rollout has helped calm airline executives after weeks of confusion about how much the AI would be embedded in day-to-day air traffic management. One airline official said the industry had been pushing the FAA to 'start, crawl, walk, run,' and that the agency appears to have settled on that approach.
According to another industry official, SMART is not expected to create any new procedures for air traffic controllers or for airlines. Instead, it will generate alternative route information that flows through the FAA’s existing systems and procedures.
The broader contract is still huge: a 12-year, $875 million effort to modernize air traffic control. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the FAA has to take a 'slow roll into the airspace,' while FAA spokesperson Hannah Walden said the agency is 'moving at record speed' and that SMART will 'fundamentally change the way we manage our skies.'
Airline officials had worried the tool could lead to more cancellations and reschedulings in the name of avoiding bottlenecks and weather-related delays, creating a costly headache for carriers and passengers. But nobody involved alleged that the system would compromise safety.
The bigger lesson for founders and operators is simple: even in a system worth $875 million, rollout discipline matters. The FAA is discovering what every operator learns sooner or later — new software does not earn trust by fiat. It earns trust by showing it can improve decisions without creating new chaos.
For airlines, the real value will come if SMART helps move flights more efficiently without adding process or friction. For the FAA, the test is whether better data can free up capacity without forcing the market to absorb another expensive layer of bureaucracy.
