ATC Archives - Leeham News and Analysis

Leeham News and Analysis has published a sustained, multi-author examination of autonomous air traffic control that spans from January through May 2026, anchored primarily by Vincent E. Bianco III, an FAA veteran and senior aviation safety consultant. The series centers on a proposed regulatory architecture Bianco calls SMART—Strategic Management of Airspace Routing Trajectories—which he articulates as a four-phase framework for deploying autonomous ATC capabilities within a structured, sequenced regulatory context. The May 31 installment represents Part 2 of that SMART analysis, building on the April 30 piece that opened by challenging the investment thesis driving the current autonomous ATC market: venture capital is described as flooding the sector with enthusiasm, but resting on regulatory assumptions that Bianco characterizes as fundamentally unsound. A companion piece from March 31 by R. Michael Baiada of ATH Group interrogates the foundational operational question underlying any transition to automation—namely, which entity retains authority over aircraft movement in three-dimensional space and time.

The regulatory critique embedded in this body of work carries direct operational significance for professional pilots. Bianco's January 2026 piece, "The Abundance Problem," traces the FAA's failure to complete a durable ATC modernization through every presidential administration since the agency's 1957 founding, framing the current autonomous ATC push not as a clean technological break but as the latest iteration of a historically troubled cycle. For flight crews operating under IFR in controlled airspace—whether flying Part 121 airline operations, Part 135 charter, or Part 91K fractional programs—the practical question is not whether automation will enter the ATC environment but under what regulatory structure it will arrive and who bears responsibility for separation assurance when it does. Baiada's framing of the aircraft movement control question is particularly pointed for crews flying advanced flight management systems and data-link-equipped aircraft: as automation assumes more of the trajectory negotiation function, the legal and procedural boundaries around pilot-in-command authority over routing and vertical profile decisions become operationally contested ground.

The SMART four-phase framework, as described in the available excerpt, suggests Bianco is attempting to provide a structured regulatory pathway that distinguishes clearly between developmental, trial, transitional, and fully autonomous deployment phases—a methodology that would map more cleanly onto existing FAA rulemaking processes than the market-driven timelines venture-backed ATC startups typically project. This matters for aviation operators because the gap between investor timelines and regulatory timelines in ATC is not a minor scheduling issue; it determines whether automation enters the National Airspace System through a tested, certificated framework or through incremental waivers and operational approvals that leave procedural ambiguity for crews and controllers. The FAA's NextGen program, referenced implicitly throughout the Leeham series, consumed roughly $7 billion over two decades and delivered only partial performance-based navigation and data communications capability before losing political momentum—a precedent that informs the skepticism Bianco directs at current autonomous ATC projections.

The archive's older material, including Bjorn Fehrm's 2022 eVTOL traffic management columns and his 2018 analysis of navigation transformation, situates the current autonomous ATC debate within a longer trajectory of airspace complexity growth. Fehrm's eVTOL work noted in late 2022 that rulemaking on collision avoidance for electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft operating outside controlled airspace remained unresolved—a gap that has only widened as the advanced air mobility sector has grown. For business aviation operators and corporate flight departments, the intersection of eVTOL urban operations with existing IFR and VFR traffic flows in terminal areas represents a near-term operational consideration, not a distant theoretical one. The aggregate message of the Leeham ATC archive is consistent: the technical capability to automate air traffic control is advancing faster than the regulatory, procedural, and liability frameworks that would govern it, and professional operators should approach vendor and investor claims about autonomous ATC deployment timelines with significant scrutiny.