FAA Rolled Out New AI Traffic Tool Right Before Nationwide Ground Stop

CNN aviation analyst Mary Schiavo said it was "too much of a coincidence" that the FAA rolled out its new $875 million SMART AI tool for managing air traffic the same day a nationwide ground stop occurred. Schiavo, a former Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Transportation, noted that new air traffic control computer systems often have difficulty communicating with much older systems, and that one goal of SMART was to manage en route traffic. She said there have been no suggestions the stoppage was due to threats or criminal terror, and guessed it was another case of new AI systems struggling to communicate with old ones.