An artificial intelligence project launched inside America’s 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.
The initiative, being spearheaded by Federal Aviation Administration chief Bryan Bedford, envisions a dramatic revamp of how the nation’s 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’s three vendors said.
Instead, the project’s goal is to reduce flight delays and make controllers’ 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.
The AI-powered initiative is called the Strategic Management of Airspace Routing Trajectories, or SMART.
