Paris, August 10, 2026. The Fédération Française Aéronautique (FFA), France’s governing body for light and sport aviation, and amenai technologies have signed a strategic partnership to deploy SMILE IA, a specialized conversational agent serving the federation’s 600 affiliated flying clubs and 50,000 licensed pilots.

Aviation documentation keeps growing in volume and complexity. With SMILE IA, the FFA gives its members a specialized assistant built on curated, validated reference material, making reliable information easier to reach. The initiative reflects the federation’s commitment to a responsible, controlled use of artificial intelligence in the service of safety, training and trustworthy information for light and sport aviation.

Built on amenai technologies’ ELA (Expert LLM Augmentation) platform, SMILE IA draws on documentation provided by the FFA along with the expertise of its commissions and partners. KOPI, SMILE IA’s conversational agent, will be available to all licensed members, instructors and flying club officials, delivering fast, contextual and reliable answers sourced from corpora selected and validated by the FFA. SMILE IA is a support tool: it does not replace official sources, regulatory texts or human expertise.

Key goals of the partnership:

  • Make access to aviation documentation safer and more reliable, complementing official sources.
  • Support training and guidance for FFA members with an intuitive, educational tool.
  • Promote responsible AI use, grounded in specialized, identified and validated sources.
  • Establish the FFA as a reference for the controlled adoption of AI across its flying clubs and membership.

A first trial phase will begin in October 2026, timed with the opening of the 2027 licensing season. It will measure adoption, answer quality and user expectations ahead of a progressive rollout.

“For nearly a century, the FFA’s role has been to support and anticipate the evolution of our aviation. With SMILE IA we are choosing a specialized, useful and controlled artificial intelligence, put at the service of our members, our instructors and our flying club officials. This tool will replace neither human expertise nor official sources: it will simply make aviation content more accessible and easier to use.”
Kevin Dupuch, President, Fédération Française Aéronautique

“We are both proud and grateful for the trust the FFA has placed in us. In a field where rigor and reliability are not optional, amenai technologies aims to deliver the best of what a controlled, sovereign and secure artificial intelligence can produce. For our ELA (Expert LLM Augmentation) product line, this is a new milestone: a broader documentation corpus and a larger number of simultaneous users.”
Dr. Alexandre Menaï, President, amenai technologies

Founded in 1929 and recognized as a public utility since 1933, the Fédération Française Aéronautique is the reference organization for light and sport aviation in France. It brings together nearly 600 affiliated flying clubs and more than 50,000 licensed pilots, and works to develop aviation practice, train pilots and promote aviation careers.

A webinar on the SMILE IA project and its rollout will be held in autumn 2026.

Learn more: ff-aero.fr