FAA Taps Small Startup Behind Alaska Airlines’ AI Flight Tool to Rebuild the National Airspace System
The Federal Aviation Administration has awarded an $875 million contract to Air Space Intelligence, a small aviation technology startup, to build a new AI-driven system for managing the entire U.S. national airspace — a major expansion of a technology the company first proved out on a much smaller scale with Alaska Airlines starting in 2021.
What the FAA Contract Involves
According to NPR’s reporting published August 10, the FAA is tasking Air Space Intelligence with building what the agency is calling the SMART system, short for Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes, and Trajectories. The project is part of the Trump administration’s broader push to deliver what officials have described as a “Brand New Air Traffic Control System” for the country.
The FAA’s underlying goal is to use technology, including artificial intelligence, to make the nation’s airspace more efficient — a mission the agency believes Air Space Intelligence’s existing commercial track record with Alaska Airlines demonstrates is achievable at scale.
How the Technology Already Works at Alaska Airlines
Alaska Airlines operates roughly 1,500 flights on a typical day, most of them guided by dispatchers working from “The Hub,” a network operations center near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, according to NPR. Those dispatchers rely on Flyways AI, a software platform built by Air Space Intelligence that ingests vast amounts of real-time data — including air traffic, wind, weather, and airspace constraints — to help anticipate what’s likely to happen during a flight before it actually occurs.
Crucially, the system doesn’t make final decisions on its own. Alaska’s Network Operations Center manager Alek Mead described its role to NPR: “It ingests all that information and it really kind of puts us all together in a nice little package for the dispatcher to look at, take some options, maybe play around with some different ideas, and then pick the most efficient and the safest route.” Flyways doesn’t decide the actual route or waypoints a dispatcher uses to move a plane from one point to another — instead, it provides suggestions that may be more efficient than what a human dispatcher working alone could identify, given the volume of data involved.
Alaska’s Track Record With the Technology
Alaska Airlines was the first airline in the world to adopt Flyways, signing an initial multi-year contract with what was then called Airspace Intelligence in May 2021, following a six-month pilot program, according to the company’s own announcement at the time. That early trial found the system could identify opportunities to reduce miles and fuel use on 64% of the airline’s mainline flights, with dispatchers ultimately evaluating and accepting 32% of the system’s recommendations.
The partnership has continued and expanded since then. According to Alaska Airlines’ own sustainability reporting, the airline has used the Flyways AI platform for four years as of last year, with the system presenting optimization opportunities for an average of 55% of Alaska’s flights and delivering fuel savings of 3% to 5% on flights longer than four hours. In one recent year alone, the airline said optimized routes identified through Flyways saved more than 1.2 million gallons of fuel — the equivalent of nearly 12,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions.
Why the FAA Believes This Can Scale Nationally
Air Space Intelligence CEO and co-founder Phillip Buckendorf has framed the company’s mission as extending well beyond any single airline’s operations, according to NPR’s coverage — positioning Alaska’s years of real-world usage as a proof of concept for the much larger, system-wide version the FAA is now funding. The core technical premise remains the same at scale: crunching data on air traffic, wind, weather, and other variables to anticipate problems and identify more efficient paths before they’re needed, rather than reacting to congestion or delays after they’ve already occurred.
What This Means for the Broader Air Traffic Control Modernization Effort
This contract represents a concrete, funded step within a much larger and more ambitious federal effort to overhaul how U.S. airspace is managed nationwide — an initiative that has drawn attention amid ongoing public concern about the country’s aging air traffic control infrastructure and staffing. By awarding this contract to a company with an established, multi-year commercial track record at a major airline rather than an unproven startup, the FAA appears to be betting on technology that’s already been tested in a live operational environment, even though scaling from managing roughly 1,500 daily Alaska Airlines flights to overseeing the entire national airspace represents a substantially larger technical undertaking.
FAQ
How much is the FAA paying Air Space Intelligence? $875 million, under a contract to build the SMART (Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes, and Trajectories) system for managing the national airspace.
What does Air Space Intelligence’s technology currently do for Alaska Airlines? Its Flyways AI platform analyzes real-time data on air traffic, weather, and airspace conditions to suggest more efficient flight routes to human dispatchers, who retain final decision-making authority over actual routing.
How long has Alaska Airlines used this technology? Since 2021, when Alaska became the first airline in the world to adopt Flyways following an initial six-month pilot program.
What fuel savings has Flyways delivered for Alaska Airlines? The airline has reported 3% to 5% fuel savings on flights longer than four hours, with optimization opportunities identified for an average of 55% of its flights, and more than 1.2 million gallons of fuel saved in one recent year alone.
Is this AI system meant to replace human air traffic controllers or dispatchers? No. Based on how the technology currently functions at Alaska Airlines, it’s designed to provide suggestions and predictive information to human decision-makers, not to make final routing decisions independently.
Conclusion
The FAA’s decision to hand an $875 million contract to a company best known for a single airline’s fuel-saving flight-routing tool reflects a significant bet that AI-driven predictive systems, proven at Alaska Airlines’ scale, can be extended to manage the far more complex demands of the entire national airspace. With the broader air traffic control modernization effort still in its early stages, Air Space Intelligence’s track record — including the specific fuel and efficiency numbers it has delivered for Alaska over the past several years — is likely to serve as the primary benchmark against which the success of this much larger, national-scale project gets measured going forward.
Sources: NPR, Jefferson Public Radio, Ideastream Public Media, NSPR, KUNC, KPBS Public Media, Connecticut Public, KVNF, Alaska Airlines (reporting dated August 10, 2026, and company announcements from 2021-2025).