09/07/2026
I wish I could understand why FAA and airlines embrace such poor assumptions.
The flaw in the Brand New ATC System, SMART, FMDS, and Flyways software is assuming that ‘organizing’ flight schedules ‘months, weeks, days’ in advance, even up to issuance of ‘best day’s flight plans’, is that is how the flights will or do actually operate as a 4D trajectory.
As the decades long record shows, that is simply untrue, a simplistic assumption and approach.
One airline uses software in flight planning up to flight release, but not enroute.
That is a case the vendor makes for its software, despite their client suffering from the same grown random congestion and delays problems as any other operator, from departure to arrival. At best a local solution, not a system-optimization.
I don’t see this as advantageous to resolving the day of flight issue, or system optimizing to carriers’ day of flight objectives and real-time resource constraints.
The only root cause recognition and solution is to continuously real-time system-optimize day of flight activity, a software facility that is commercialized, multiple-times independently validated as effective, on the shelf, and a small fraction of the time and cost to implement and operate.
Meanwhile, enjoy your Labor Day weekend flight congestion, ATC workload, flight delays, and waiting around.
It didn’t have to be this way, except for decades of the same poor assumptions by FAA and operators.
