Shon Dafi unveils SMART AI to assist U.S. air traffic controllers

U.S. officials have unveiled a new artificial intelligence system meant to support — not replace — air traffic controllers, the country's transportation chief said as he demonstrated the platform.

SMART brings real‑time and predictive data to control centers

Called SMART (Strategic Management of Air Routes and Trajectories), the tool ingests roughly 200 data points, including weather, flight tracks and scheduled arrivals and departures, to highlight possible conflicts and suggest courses of action to human controllers.

Shon Dafi, U.S. Secretary of Transportation, said the platform combines live operational feeds with forward‑looking models so controllers can see not only where aircraft are, but where conditions likely will be. "This is a live view of the American airspace. Planes, the weather forecast across the system, so we take the weather data, we also take the flight path. So our blue color is departures. And if you see magenta or pink, there's a problem for that flight. But all of this data is important to us because we can use predictive data to see where flights are going, but also where the weather will be in the future," he said.

Dafi emphasized that the system is an aid rather than an authority over the airspace. "I want to be really clear. There has been a lot of conversation about artificial intelligence and who controls the airspace. This is a predictive tool that will give a nudge to the person, to someone running the airspace. But it will always be a human that runs the airspace in America. So this tool will not run the airspace, but it gives us better information, better data for managing the space on behalf of the American people," he said.

Officials described SMART as the most advanced air‑traffic management technology in the world and said its rollout crowns a yearlong effort by the Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration to modernize how the nation manages its skies.

The announcement also referenced wider AI adoption trends: about 18% of the global working‑age population and nearly 90% of larger companies now regularly use at least one AI tool or feature in their operations.

Photo: press material from the event