Exhausted Humans, Tireless Algorithms, Same Crowded Sky

Somewhere above Washington, D.C., the airspace knots into one of the more complicated games of three-dimensional Tetris a person can play. The FAA has decided to hand part of that game to an algorithm. Not the plane. Not the landing. The traffic jam. And honestly? Good place to start.On June 22, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford named Air Space Intelligence the winner of a twelve-year contract reported at $875 million. The Boston company, backed by Andreessen Horowitz, beat Palantir and Thales, as Bloomberg reported at the time. Its Flyways platform already runs at Alaska Airlines, Delta, United, the Army, and the Air Force. Worth knowing where the headline number comes from: the FAA's own announcement carries neither the dollar figure nor the twelve-year term. Both trace back to the company's press release and to the Wall Street Journal.The money funds two linked technologies. Flow Management Data and Services (FMDS) replaces the aging backbone…