The FAA put AI in every air traffic control center. Three days later, planes nationwide stopped.

The Federal Aviation Administration has expanded Smart, its AI traffic advisory tool, to all 22 air route traffic control centers nationwide, announcing the rollout on November 10 after an initial September deployment over the Washington area 1

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. The agency that runs the national airspace system now has an AI adviser in every regional center, and the rollout is already contested.

What Smart does

Smart is an $875 million cloud-based system that pulls together data on weather, flight paths, traffic flow and controller staffing 1

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. It predicts traffic patterns and suggests routes, schedules and arrival order 1

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. It advises; it does not fly anything. A human team at the agency checks its recommendations before they reach control facilities, and local controllers can decline them 1

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The agency says the tool will cut delays, fuel consumption and travel friction, and it points to the Washington-area rollout as proof 1

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. In that region, it says, 180 flights have been rerouted since September 21, saving an average of 10 minutes and nearly 80 gallons of fuel each 1

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. Those are the agency's own figures, not audited ones. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has promoted Smart for months as part of a broader air traffic modernization push 2

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. There is, he says, "always going to be a human that manages the airspace in America" 2

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The pushback

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the union representing more than 15,000 controllers, says the agency never consulted it on how Smart was designed, tested or rolled out 1

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. The union adds that it cannot speak to the tool's effect on the workforce 1

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. House Democrats have asked the Government Accountability Office to review the implementation strategy, the performance metrics and the safety risk management 2

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. Their letter cites limited controller training and the possibility that the AI could hallucinate safety-critical information 2

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. That review has been requested, not delivered.

The evidence behind those claims is thin, too. The expansion beat the 90-day test period the agency had told airlines to expect, per Politico's mid-September reporting, and the reason it moved early is unclear 2

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. The agency's only publicized success story is an unnamed cargo flight into Dallas-Fort Worth that got a shorter route; no passenger-flight data has been provided 1

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. Airline executives, including Delta's Ed Bastian and American's Robert Isom, backed the rollout, and one industry official called the tool's limited role "a big relief" 2

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Three days later

On Friday, November 13, the agency ordered a rare nationwide ground stop starting at 4 p.m., citing "extraordinary circumstances" 3

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. The stop came three days after Smart reached all 22 centers. The agency did not link the stop to Smart. One source told the New York Post that a software upgrade might have caused it; nothing has been confirmed.