WASHINGTON — Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the delivery of a new air traffic control management tool called SMART on Sept. 21. The tool consolidates 200 data streams to improve airspace management and reduce flight delays and cancellations for the roughly 2.9 million Americans who fly daily.
The tool represents a meaningful operational advance in the decades-long effort to modernize the FAA’s aging air traffic control technology infrastructure.
SMART integrates data from radar systems, weather services, airline operations centers and other sources into a unified management platform. Air traffic controllers and flow managers previously had to monitor multiple separate systems to make airspace decisions.
Flight delays and cancellations cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars annually in lost productivity, wasted fuel and passenger inconvenience. The FAA has attributed a significant share of delays to air traffic management limitations, particularly during severe weather events when controllers must reroute traffic across congested airspace.
The National Air Traffic Controllers Association has long advocated for technology upgrades, arguing that controllers are working with systems designed decades ago that cannot efficiently manage modern traffic volumes.
For airline passengers, the tool’s deployment could translate into fewer delays during weather events and peak travel periods. Consolidated data streams allow controllers to make faster, more informed decisions about routing, spacing and flow management.
The FAA handles approximately 45,000 flights per day across the national airspace system. Even small improvements in system efficiency can produce significant reductions in cumulative delay minutes across the network.
The SMART tool is part of a broader FAA modernization program that has faced criticism for cost overruns and timeline slips. The agency has been working for more than a decade to transition from radar-based air traffic control to a satellite-based system under the NextGen program.
Airlines for America, the industry’s primary trade group, has urged accelerated FAA technology deployment, arguing that modernization delays cost carriers and passengers billions in avoidable disruptions.