The Federal Aviation Administration issued a nationwide ground stop for all U.S. airports on November 13, 2026, after communication problems affected multiple Air Route Traffic Control Centers, according to its preliminary statement.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a public statement that the issue affected all Air Route Traffic Control Centers, the facilities that handle high-altitude traffic, and that FAA technicians were investigating. The initial statements did not identify a root cause or connect the ground stop to a particular technology system.
The disruption followed the FAA’s November 10, 2026 announcement that the AI-assisted Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories (SMART) system would expand nationwide. ASI said in a statement that the ground stop was not based on or caused by SMART, any ASI product or the company’s integration with the FAA and air traffic control.
How SMART Supports Pre-Departure Planning
The expansion takes SMART beyond an initial National Capital Region rollout to the airspace of all 22 centers. The cloud-based platform centralizes 200 data streams, including weather patterns, flight paths, traffic flow and controller staffing metrics, giving the FAA a consolidated planning picture.
An FAA fact sheet says the system uses AI to analyze airline schedules, weather, airport capacity, airspace conditions and operational constraints to predict traffic flows and identify potential conflicts before they occur. Its shared view is intended to help the FAA, airlines and other operators agree on efficient routes and departure times.
The platform serves as a planning layer alongside existing FAA systems, while controllers remain responsible for keeping aircraft safely separated. Recommendations also move through a human review chain: FAA specialists at the SMART center in Washington, D.C., analyze and validate the data before sending scheduling recommendations to the Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Warrenton, Virginia. The Command Center routes those recommendations to air traffic control facilities for local leadership to consider.
Early Results and the Communications Investigation
The FAA dates SMART’s start to September 21, 2026. By the expansion announcement, the agency reported that the system had helped reroute 180 flights, with average savings of 10 minutes and almost 80 gallons of fuel per rerouted flight. Those figures cover the initial deployment and do not measure performance after the nationwide expansion.
The FAA presents earlier identification of constraints and conflicts as a way to adjust routes and timing before a problem spreads. Its stated goals are better efficiency, predictability and systemwide performance while maximizing existing airspace capacity as airlines, cargo operations and advanced air mobility compete for the same airspace.
SMART’s documented role is distinct from the function at the center of the ground stop. The platform produces pre-departure analysis and scheduling recommendations, while the FAA attributed the stop to communications problems at centers handling high-altitude traffic. Determining what caused those problems, and whether any connected FAA system contributed, remains the central unanswered question. SMART’s expansion explains the attention on the platform, but timing alone is not evidence that AI caused the disruption.
