The first trial run for the AI tool also comes as the FAA has been grappling with a decades-long shortage of air traffic controllers after President Ronald Reagan fired more than 11,000 controllers in 1981. Since that time, the air traffic controller workforce has operated in a “permanent crisis,” with minimum staffing levels, according to Mann.

Attempts to hire more air traffic controllers have fallen short, and the overall workforce declined by 6 percent over the past decade, according to a US Government Accountability Office report published in December 2025. Recruitment efforts were complicated by government shutdowns in 2013 and 2018–2019 that froze hiring and training, along with training restrictions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2025, the FAA was among many federal agencies that saw hundreds of new probationary hires get laid off by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team at the start of the second Trump administration. Although air traffic controllers were spared, the job cuts affected some employees who worked on air traffic control systems. A federal judge eventually ordered the FAA to reinstate 132 employees.

The air traffic controller workforce was further stressed by having to work without paychecks during a 43-day government shutdown from October 1 to November 12, 2025. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy claimed 15 to 20 air traffic controllers were retiring each day during the shutdown compared to an average of four per day, and FAA chief Bryan Bedford described the agency as losing up to 500 air traffic controller trainees during the period.

FAA leaders may be betting on the agency’s overall modernization effort and new technologies, such as the AI-driven SMART system to help ease the shortage of air traffic controllers. In May of this year, the agency reduced the estimated number of air traffic controllers it would require for the 2026 to 2028 time period by about 2,000 controllers.

But the stakes are high as the FAA attempts to address the shortage of air traffic controllers while also deploying new AI tools. A deadly reminder came on January 29, 2025, when 67 people died after a US Army Black Hawk helicopter collided with an American Airlines passenger jet just southeast of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Investigators cited airport tower understaffing as one of multiple “causal factors,” with just one controller handling both helicopter and runway traffic on the night of the fatal incident.