The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has awarded Air Space Intelligence (ASI) a 12-year, $875 million contract to build a new airspace-management system designed to reduce congestion and delays across US airspace.
The system is called SMART, short for Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes, and Trajectories. It is designed to help the FAA spot airspace problems before they turn into delays.
SMART will use data on airline schedules, weather, airport capacity, airspace restrictions and other operating constraints to predict where congestion or conflicts are likely to develop.
The award is notable because ASI beat much larger rivals Palantir and Thales for one of the FAA’s most important air traffic modernization programs.
Palantir is a major US government software contractor. Thales is one of the world’s best-known air traffic management technology providers.
ASI is a much smaller company, but it is not new to aviation.
The company builds software for complex air operations, including its Flyways AI platform, which is used by airlines for flight monitoring, route optimization and airspace planning.
Alaska Airlines became an early public customer in 2021, when it began using Flyways AI to help dispatchers evaluate flight routes, weather, traffic and other operational constraints.
The FAA contract moves ASI from airline operations software into a much larger role at the center of the national airspace system with AI-enabled technology.
The goal of SMART is to make air traffic flow management more predictive. Instead of responding to congestion after delays have already built up, the FAA wants the system to help coordinate schedules and routes earlier in the process.
That could help ease delays on days when weather, staffing limits, runway capacity or airspace restrictions reduce the number of flights that can safely move through a region.
The system could also affect how the FAA manages demand at some of the busiest and most delay-prone parts of the US network, including the New York area, Chicago and other major airline hubs.
Airlines have been watching the program closely because it could influence which flights are moved, slowed or rerouted when demand exceeds available capacity.
The FAA has been under pressure to modernize air traffic systems after years of staffing shortages, aging infrastructure, weather-related disruption and repeated congestion in major markets.
