FAA awards ASI $875 million contract to overhaul flight scheduling

Investing.com -- The Federal Aviation Administration awarded an $875 million contract to Air Space Intelligence on Monday to overhaul U.S. flight scheduling and improve flight management over a 12-year period.

The new system will ensure adequate capacity for air traffic demand and provide data for flight management. The system will use data to prevent significant congestion and delays by strategically coordinating schedules and trajectories before aircraft depart, the FAA said.

The system, called Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes, and Trajectories or SMART, uses data to analyze airline schedules, weather, airport capacity, airspace conditions and operational constraints to predict traffic flows and identify potential conflicts before they occur.

Airlines have been talking to the FAA for months about the program. Airlines have expressed concerns privately about how the agency will decide which flights will need to be moved when there are conflicts and whether the system can be rolled out as soon as this fall.

The FAA has struggled to address congestion issues for years while facing rising demand, runway construction, severe weather issues and air traffic controller shortfalls. The agency ordered airlines at Chicago O'Hare in April to cut 300 daily flights, citing congestion concerns. Last week the FAA extended flight cuts at Newark and other New York-area airports.

Last year, Congress awarded $12.5 billion to replace outdated technology and boost understaffed air traffic control towers. The U.S. Department of Transportation wants another $10 billion for further improvements.

Air Space Intelligence CEO Phillip Buckendorf said the system will use "commercially proven technology already helping everyone from major airlines to the broader aviation community operate more efficiently and predictably."

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said "we must change how flights are managed," noting that the system "will fundamentally reshape how the airspace is managed – slashing thousands of delays and cancellations in the process."

Airlines for America, the main industry trade group, said the program will "make air traffic more efficient and timely while maintaining our gold standard of safety." The group said the program will provide carriers with more efficient routings and more predictable information about system capacity to balance capacity and demand.

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