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WASHINGTON (7News) —The FAA launched new technology Monday that uses artificial intelligence to try to reduce flight delays and cancellations, and the D.C. region is the first place in the country where it is being used.
Although the FAA said the new Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories (SMART) technology will help manage air traffic more efficiently, some critics are concerned about using AI to manage something as critical as air traffic control.
At a press conference Monday afternoon, leaders at USDOT and the FAA said the new SMART technology uses AI to analyze weather, flight paths, and arrival and departure data to help air traffic controllers manage flights in ways that reduce delays.
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They said the technology was launched on Monday at Reagan National, BWI Marshall, and Dulles. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford used Reagan National as an example of an airport he said the new technology will help. He talked about when storms rolled through the D.C. area on August 10. Bedford said the new technology would have helped prevent some of the decisions made that day.
“I think we diverted 11 flights during this storm that shouldn’t have had to divert,” Bedford said. “It was just bad data. Better data would have understood that the storm was moving much faster, and to keep traffic to the west of the storm so that once the storm passed they would be able to easily get back into the airport.”
DCA’s main runway is the busiest runway in the country, and Bedford said the new technology could help controllers use it as efficiently as possible.
“We think of Reagan as highly constrained, slot-controlled, and that there’s no more room at Reagan. That’s actually not true,” Bedford said. “We’ve got significant inefficiencies here where we can better align capacity to demand.”
But the idea of using artificial intelligence to manage flight traffic is unsettling to some.
“The FAA should not use my constituents as guinea pigs for an unproven AI air traffic control system,” said a statement from Democratic Congressman Don Beyer, whose district includes Reagan National Airport. “The safety of the 24 million people traveling through DCA each year must be the top priority. Residents of this region are still uncertain about air safety after last year’s fatal accident, and the Administration did shockingly little to educate the traveling public about this development before implementing it in one of the most complex airspaces in the world.”
“NATCA has not been involved in the design, testing, or implementation of SMART and therefore cannot speak to its effect on the air traffic control workforce at this time,” said a statement from the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. “NATCA believes any new technology should complement and not replace the experience, training, and professional judgment of air traffic controllers who are responsible for the safety of the National Airspace System.”
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy addressed concerns about the use of artificial intelligence in managing air traffic at Monday’s press conference.
“I want to be really clear. There’s been a lot of conversation about AI and who is controlling the airspace It’s always going to be a human that manages the airspace in America,” Duffy said. “So this tool won’t manage the airspace, but it gives us better information, better data to manage the airspace on behalf of the American people.”
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“Humans control the airspace, humans make decisions,” Duffy added.
The FAA added in a statement that leaders at local air traffic control facilities can choose to accept or reject AI suggestions.
SMART technology is currently in use only in the D.C. region, but the FAA plans to gradually expand it to other parts of the country.
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