An artificial intelligence project launched inside America\u2019s aviation safety agency is aimed at easing burdens on the thousands of air traffic controllers who guide planes through the skies, companies involved in the nascent effort told POLITICO.<\/p>\n
The initiative, being spearheaded by Federal Aviation Administration chief Bryan Bedford, envisions a dramatic revamp of how the nation\u2019s increasingly complex airspace functions. But it would not seek to supplant the role of human controllers in making the second-by-second decisions needed to keep air travel safe, two of the project\u2019s three vendors said.<\/p>\n
Instead, the project\u2019s goal is to reduce flight delays and make controllers\u2019 jobs easier by better harnessing information like airline scheduling data to reduce plane congestion before it occurs, according to aerospace technology company Thales and software firm Air Space Intelligence. Palantir, the third technology corporation involved in the effort, declined to comment.<\/p>\n
The AI-powered initiative is called the Strategic Management of Airspace Routing Trajectories, or SMART.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be very clear, SMART is not aimed at separating aircraft or doing any of those kind of safety critical functions,\u201d said Todd Donovan, Thales\u2019s vice president for airspace mobility solutions for the Americas.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really about organizing the demand on the airspace, the demand on the airport, so that we don\u2019t cause congestion unexpectedly. We try to deal with it proactively,\u201d Donovan said. However, he also said SMART could prevent \u201ctwo aircraft being in conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n
What that looks like in practice is still unclear, including how the technology would fit into the FAA\u2019s existing mesh of computer systems. It may take months before an answer is in hand as Thales, Air Space Intelligence and Palantir, whom the FAA invited to participate in the initiative, compete to head the project.<\/p>\n
The agency said it plans to award a contract \u201csoon,\u201d adding that SMART will \u201cpredict air traffic flows and adjust departure times to resolve conflicts.\u201d The National Air Traffic Controllers Association union, which represents the FAA\u2019s nearly 11,000 fully certified controllers, acknowledged a request for comment but didn\u2019t provide a statement.<\/p>\n
The AI effort comes amid Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy\u2019s sprawling, multibillion-dollar endeavor<\/a> to upgrade the aging technology and facilities that controllers use before President Donald Trump\u2019s second term ends. NATCA has supported this overarching goal.<\/p>\n The endeavor is underway a year after the deadly airline-helicopter crash<\/a> near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport \u2014 the nation\u2019s worst aviation disaster in nearly a quarter-century \u2014 laid bare the increasing strain<\/a> on the United States\u2019 overburdened air safety system.<\/p>\n In a recent interview with CBS News<\/a>, Duffy rejected the idea of supplanting controllers with automated technology.<\/p>\n “Am I gonna replace a controller and have AI manage the airspace?\u201d he said. \u201cThe answer to that is hell no, that\u2019s not gonna happen.\u201d<\/p>\n The big picture<\/p>\n Controllers\u2019 main responsibility is physically separating aircraft, while an FAA command center<\/a> outside of Washington manages the balance of airspace demand and capacity at a broader scale<\/a>. This latter strategy aims to mitigate issues that can ripple across the aviation system<\/a> such as storms, staffing shortfalls or too many planes arriving at an airport around the same time.<\/p>\n Take, for example, bad weather sweeping across the Southeast. Controllers at a local FAA building might direct pilots to wait in a holding pattern away from a thunderhead until it passes over an airport.<\/p>\n But hours before that, with disruption possible across the wider area, the FAA may limit the number of aircraft that can fly through the entire region. This type of planning appears to be what SMART is honing in on \u2014 versus the kind of in-the-moment, quick-thinking decisions that controllers often make, such as, for instance, redirecting an approaching jet away from an airport when a helicopter is also flying nearby.<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea is you start months in advance, looking at [carrier] schedule data, and as you get closer, you start having forecasted weather. … \u2018Tomorrow, there\u2019s supposed to be a storm coming to this area, so you may get low visibility at [Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport], and you may as a result of that lower the capacity,\u2019\u201d Donovan said, referring to the number of flights. \u201cHow do we think about it a day in advance and work with the airlines to say, \u2018OK, can we space things out a little bit, can we anticipate some of it\u2019 so that … collectively we\u2019re not all just reacting to something happening, we\u2019re actually planning for it and trying to smooth things out.\u201d<\/p>\n Phillip Buckendorf, CEO of Air Space Intelligence, said that \u201cweeks and months\u201d beforehand, \u201cyou want to basically predict the flight trajectories based on the schedules that are out there,\u201d then as more information comes in the day of travel, \u201chow do you basically adjust everything, flight by flight through AI,\u201d to \u201coptimize\u201d the airspace. Alaska Airlines has contracted with his company<\/a> for an AI platform to help dispatchers with \u201cimproving the predictability and flow\u201d of traffic.<\/p>\n Making changes ‘upstream’<\/p>\n But Donovan said SMART could also ward off at least some cases in which controllers need to step in to ensure that planes remain safely apart.<\/p>\n The project, he added, is an invitation-only, \u201cchallenge-based\u201d competition in which the FAA is assessing what Thales, Air Space Intelligence and Palantir come up with.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s happening is strategically preflight, or before a flight gets to an air traffic controller, some small adjustment\u2019s been made upstream. And as a result of that, instead of two aircraft being in conflict,\u201d Donovan said, they will pass by each other at an appropriate distance.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018What if we slow the aircraft down 30 minutes earlier by just a tiny bit?\u2019 … So the controller now sees the traffic, looks at it,\u201d and there\u2019s \u201cno problem,\u201d he said. \u201cThe job doesn\u2019t change, but the idea is that the workload should be lower.\u201d<\/p>\n Buckendorf said SMART is focused on traffic flows, but there will be \u201ca lot less stress on the tactical side\u201d \u2014 leading to increased efficiency and safety.<\/p>\n