The FAA's ambitious overhaul of the air traffic control system comes amid rising public anxiety about AI. The CEO of the company that's building the software explains how it works.
Page A2From§Eachthe sunrise edition — 1 October 2026
Short-staffed controllers call conditions unsafe; FAA answers with an AI tool and insists humans still run it.
As it ran on the front
On September 4, air traffic controllers working the Washington region told reporters their agency had driven morale to an all-time low and left the flying public at heightened risk, the fallout from an August interview with FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford about working conditions. Seventeen days later, on September 21, Bedford stood beside Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to unveil the response: a new tool called SMART, the Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes, and Trajectories, launched first in the same Washington region the controllers had just described as unsafe.
Duffy told reporters the administration was not outsourcing aviation to artificial intelligence. It is, so far, outsourcing the explanation of that decision — by October 1, NPR had the chief executive of the company building SMART's software on the air, walking listeners through how the tool works and addressing what the network called rising public anxiety. The agency built the tool. The vendor is doing the reassuring.…
…(cont) The pitch is that SMART predicts flight delays and advises the controllers already working the floor. Those are the same controllers who, seventeen days earlier, said there were not enough of them to begin with. SMART does not add a single body to a tower. It adds software layered over the staffing gap the controllers had just put on the record, plus a press conference insisting the humans underneath it are still the ones flying the plane — the humans who had just said, on camera, that there weren't enough of them.
Nothing in the record says the controllers asked for a predictive-delay algorithm. The agency's answer arrived seventeen days later wearing a different shape: not more controllers, a tool for the ones already stretched thin, unveiled by the same administrator whose working conditions had just made the news, and vouched for by the company set to profit from the contract.
The airspace, Duffy says, is still under human control. He is right in the narrowest sense available: humans are still there, understaffed, doing the job the agency has not yet funded properly, now with a new piece of software watching over their shoulder and a press release insisting that is somehow the same thing as hiring them.
“You tell the government you're short-staffed and scared for the public, and seventeen days later they hand you a computer program for the tower instead of a hiring budget. That's not reassurance, that's a receipt: the money went to a software contract, not to the controllers who asked for help. Next time your flight sits on the tarmac, remember who got paid to tell you not to worry.”
“Look, humans are flying the plane — the tool just predicts delays and advises, it's basically a weather app with better branding, nobody's touching the stick. And sure, the controllers said they were short-staffed three — wait, seventeen days before this, that's — okay, that number's not great for us. The point is nobody's firing a controller to install a server rack, we're just adding the server rack on top of the same understaffed shift and calling it innovation. That's not what I meant to say.”
The receipts
· Duffy addresses concerns of AI use in air traffic control: ‘Humans control the airspace’ from the morgue, 21 Sep 2026
· FAA rolls out air traffic AI tool in Washington region from the morgue, 21 Sep 2026
· Air traffic controllers turn on FAA chief as tensions boil over from the morgue, 4 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.