FAA accepting bids for AI to assist air traffic controllers

Sunday, April 19, 2026

The Federal Aviation Administration is working with three bidders to develop artificial intelligence software to help air traffic controllers manage flights across the nation's airspace. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy discussed the effort during a media event on Friday, and said the goal is to help anticipate schedule conflicts and improve planning for bottlenecks at busy airports.

Posted by lamplighter at 02:00 PM | 6 COMMENTS | permalink | Comment on This Entry |

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More from the article ...

... "This software, as they look at the flight paths, won't see [potential issues] 15 minutes before it happens .. a controller will get a notice that they could change one of the airplane's flight paths slightly and they can deconflict it an hour and a half or two hours before the conflict even happens," Duffy said during a media event hosted by Semafor.

The program is aimed at fundamentally changing how airspace in the United States operates, The Air Current reported, and is a major part of the agency's efforts at modernization and redesign.

The FAA has mounted an effort to see how AI can improve the functionality and safety of the country's air traffic control systems, especially amid a growing shortage of controllers, at least partially because political debates that have hampered the agency's funding. ...

#1 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-04-19 02:01 PM | Reply

NOPE

#2 | Posted by LegallyYourDead at 2026-04-19 02:49 PM | Reply

@#2

Yeah, I have a difficulty in seeing a happy outcome for this development.

... on many levels.

#3 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-04-20 12:18 AM | Reply

ATC already use AI to assist air traffic controllers. Ground management, conflict resolution automation, traffic flow & routing, etc.

#4 | Posted by sitzkrieg at 2026-04-20 08:11 AM | Reply | Funny: 1

I saw the video of the tesla driving through a lowered railroad crossing gate last week.

This is going to be a ginormous epic failure by stinky that will cost hundreds of people their lives.

Ground management

Like having firetrucks crossing the paths of landing airplanes?

#5 | Posted by Nixon at 2026-04-20 12:19 PM | Reply | Newsworthy 1

0 for 2.

Tesla is level 2 autonomy, the driver is supposed to intervene when it's headed for the tracks.

The human ATC was intervening the entire time, the humans in the truck did not respond to radio calls.

Anyways, here's a basic introduction from NASA on the subject of AI/ML research for Air Traffic Management.

ntrs.nasa.gov

Like the comments to Lamp earlier about stock algos, we're again back to the Long Short Term Memory model for 4D deconfliction (x,y,z,time). Sequence prediction in time-series data so we know the probability of where an aircraft could be eventually.

#6 | Posted by sitzkrieg at 2026-04-20 12:51 PM | Reply | Funny: 1