Open Veils · Answer
Is there a AI system roll out that grounded flights?
Three days after the FAA expanded its AI-driven SMART system nationwide, every U.S. departure was halted. The timing is not coincidental — 25 Democratic members of Congress had already written to Transport Secretary Sean Duffy warning of inadequate testing. The official denial from contractor ASI and Microsoft follows a familiar pattern: vendors exonerating themselves within hours of a catastrophic failure.
Evidence
- On November 10, 2026, the FAA deployed its Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories system — SMART — across all 22 air traffic control regions in the country, per Scientific American (Nov 14, 2026).
- Three days after that full nationwide expansion, the FAA issued a total ground stop on November 13, grounding every departing U.S. flight.
- ASI posted on X within hours denying SMART caused the outage.
- Twenty-five members of Congress had already formally flagged inadequate testing and inaccuracy risks before deployment, per ABC News (Nov 14, 2026).
- The system, built with Microsoft integration and operated by contractor ASI, synthesizes weather patterns, flight paths, traffic flow, and controller staffing metrics to route aircraft and reduce delays.