April 18 (UPI) -- The Federal Aviation Administration is working with three bidders to develop artificial intelligence software to help air traffic controllers manage flights across the nation's airspace.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy discussed the effort during a media event on Friday, and said the goal is to help anticipate schedule conflicts and improve planning for bottlenecks at busy airports.
"This software, as they look at the flight paths, won't see [potential issues] 15 minutes before it happens .. a controller will get a notice that they could change one of the airplane's flight paths slightly and they can deconflict it an hour and a half or two hours before the conflict even happens," Duffy said during a media event hosted by Semafor.
The program is aimed at fundamentally changing how airspace in the United States operates, The Air Current reported, and is a major part of the agency's efforts at modernization and redesign.
The FAA has mounted an effort to see how AI can improve the functionality and safety of the country's air traffic control systems, especially amid a growing shortage of controllers, at least partially because political debates that have hampered the agency's funding.
