The Proving Sky
In 2021 one Alaska airline let a machine pick its routes. In 2026 the FAA bought that machine for the whole country.
The deck
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The story
The FAA award to Air Space Intelligence runs 875 million dollars over a reported 12 years. It funds SMART and the FMDS flow platform for the national airspace.
The machine is Flyways. It reads traffic, wind and weather and flags what a flight will hit, then recommends a route a dispatcher or pilot accepts. It never flies the plane.
Alaska runs it across roughly 1,500 flights a day and says it saves about 1 million gallons of fuel and tens of thousands of flight hours a year.
Slides map the 875 million dollar award, the SMART and FMDS scope, the fall 2026 date and the 2021 Alaska deployment.
Who owns that credit now, the carrier that flew the risk or the vendor banking the national contract?
What we verified
13 CLAIMS, EACH RE-FETCHED FROM ITS SOURCE BEFORE THIS DECK SHIPPED
The FAA awarded Air Space Intelligence an $875 million contract to modernize the national airspace system
Alaska Airlines reported that optimized routes using Flyways saved over 1.2 million gallons of fuel equivalent to 11,958 metric tons of CO2
Flyways generates optimized route recommendations for dispatchers and pilots that are safe, ATC compliant, minimize fuel, reduce flight time, and avoid congested airspace
Alaska Airlines says Flyways saves it tens of thousands of hours in the air
Flyways analyzes air traffic, wind, weather and other factors to anticipate what will happen during flight before it does
The FAA contract with Air Space Intelligence is worth $875 million
The FAA award to Air Space Intelligence is a 12 year contract
The new FAA system is named SMART for Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes, and Trajectories
The contract also covers the Flow Management Data and Services platform known as FMDS
The FAA targeted an initial operational deployment of SMART in fall 2026
Alaska Airlines was the first airline to start using the Flyways system in 2021
Alaska Airlines operates roughly 1,500 flights on a typical day
Alaska Airlines says Flyways saves it roughly a million gallons of fuel per year
Beats
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