Technology · Around the aircraft
Air traffic modernisation
SMART, traffic flow prediction, ageing telecom infrastructure
Two independent sources on every claim.
Why it is here
Ground stops and flow restrictions decide whether an aircraft you released actually flies.
At a glance
- The FAA began testing SMART around Washington on 21 September 2026, supporting Reagan National, Dulles and Baltimore Washington International.
- It was built by Air Space Intelligence under a 12 year contract worth 875 million dollars, announced on 22 June 2026.
- The case for it was made for the FAA on 21 September, when a single severed fibre line took out a TRACON's primary and backup circuits at once and grounded five Northeast airports.
- Much of the underlying telecom infrastructure still depends on single circuits rather than diverse paths.
What it is
SMART stands for Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories. It is a cloud platform that sits on top of the FAA's existing traffic management systems and reads airline schedules, weather, airport capacity and airspace constraints together, then predicts where traffic will bunch up and flags conflicts before they happen.
In plain terms
This is a planning tool, not an autopilot. It does not control aircraft and does not replace controllers. It proposes schedule and routing adjustments, and people decide whether to accept them. The agency says it can look more than 45 days ahead.
Why it matters on the line
A technician does not operate this system, but it decides whether the aircraft you released actually flies.
On the line
Flow restrictions and ground stops are the mechanism by which a serviceable aircraft still does not depart, and they reshuffle the overnight plan you built your manpower around. A system that predicts congestion further ahead is, in principle, a system that gives line planning more warning. Judge it on whether your operations control centre gets earlier notice, not on the technology.
The fibre cut on 21 September is the more revealing story. A construction crew near New Brunswick severed a cable carrying both the primary and the backup circuits for the Philadelphia TRACON. The FAA ordered ground stops at Newark, Teterboro, Philadelphia, LaGuardia and JFK. More than a thousand flights were cancelled and over six thousand delayed, with full restoration taking up to thirteen hours.
Responsibility for the cut is still disputed between Verizon, Amtrak and New Jersey Transit contractors. The point for this site is simpler: a single mechanical failure in a trench took out a region's airspace management, because the redundancy was nominal rather than physical.
Where to read more
The two stories are the FAA switching on SMART and the severed fibre line.
Sources
- TechCrunch, "The FAA's plan to fix air traffic? $875M worth of AI", 17 September 2026. https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/17/the-faas-plan-to-fix-air-traffic-875-million-worth-of-ai/
- NewsNation, "FAA deploying AI-powered air traffic control software amid concerns", September 2026. https://www.newsnationnow.com/travel/faa-ai-powered-air-traffic-control-software/
- CNN, "FAA outage: Airport operations resume after flight delays, cancellations at major Northeast travel hubs", 21 September 2026. https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/21/us/airport-delays-equipment-failure
- CNBC, "Hundreds of flights into Newark, New York, Philadelphia disrupted after Verizon fiber line cut", 21 September 2026. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/21/newark-philadelphia-nyc-flight-disruptions.html