FAA turns on an $875.95 million AI flight-planning tool at three Washington airports

The system. The Federal Aviation Administration switched on a system called SMART on Monday, Sept. 21, at Reagan National, Dulles and Baltimore/Washington International. It reads air traffic, airport capacity and weather together, then recommends changes — departure times, routes, timing at points along the way — to break up jams before planes leave the gate. It does not fly anything, and it does not space planes apart. Controllers still do that, and the FAA says the tool will not replace any of them. The contract. It runs 12 years and was awarded in June 2026 to Air Space Intelligence of Boston. It is worth $875.95 million; the company's prior federal work was $2.7 million in Air Force prototypes. The agency wants the system running nationwide by 2028. Its computers sit at the Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Warrenton, Virginia. (TS: The FAA's own fact sheet publishes no national date — just "fall 2026" for initial operations.) Where it stands. The FAA published no delay-reduction target, no baseline year and no accuracy standard with the launch. The controllers' union says it was not part of the design, the testing or the rollout. (TS: NATCA is also about 3,000 certified controllers short, per Administrator Bedford's Sept. 15 testimony.)

What the same company's airline version did in trials:

• Flights where the software found a better route: 64%
• Recommendations dispatchers actually accepted: 32%
• Time saved per Alaska Airlines flight, Jan.–Sept. 2022: 2.7 minutes