By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON, June 22 (Reuters) - The Federal Aviation Administration said on Monday that it has awarded an $875 million, 12-year contract to Air Space Intelligence to overhaul U.S. flight scheduling to improve how flights are managed.
The FAA will use a new system to ensure adequate capacity for air traffic demand and provide data for the management of flights. The system will use data to prevent significant congestion and delays "by strategically coordinating schedules and trajectories
before aircraft depart," the FAA added.
The system, dubbed 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 but 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.
Facing rising demand, runway construction, severe weather issues and air traffic controller shortfalls, the FAA has struggled to address congestion issues for years. The agency ordered airlines at Chicago O'Hare in April to cut 300 daily flights, citing congestion concerns, and last week 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Last year, Congress awarded $12.5 billion to replace outdated technology and boost understaffed air traffic control towers. USDOT 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."
"We must change how flights are managed," said U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, 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 in order to balance capacity and demand."
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Mark Porter)
