The FAA is finally retiring floppy disks from air traffic control

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced on Thursday that the FAA is rolling out a new system called the Enterprise Information Display System, or E-IDS. It will replace older setups that still depend on floppy disks, at more than 400 air traffic control facilities.

"Good news America: floppy disks are out, 21st century tech is in," Duffy said in a release.

The FAA says the change will give controllers faster access to information, cut repair costs and improve safety for people who fly.

• Where it starts: Atlantic City International Airport, Nashville International Airport and Greater Rochester International Airport.
• Data hubs: the processing centers in Atlanta and Salt Lake City.
• The goal: 435 facilities upgraded by the end of 2028.

Upgrades have already kicked off at those five sites. The rest follow over the next two years.

Think of an air traffic controller's desk. Beyond the radar screen, they need a steady stream of other facts: where storms are, which equipment is down, which pieces of sky are closed and what pilots are reporting.

Airlines for America chief Nick Calio once described the older system, known as IDS (Information Display System), as "the equivalent to a pilot's flight bag." It holds the information a controller relies on to run operations.

E-IDS puts all of that on a modern digital dashboard. It brings together real-time weather alerts, equipment outages, restricted airspace changes and pilot reports. It also replaces manual steps and old physical storage media.

In real life Imagine your phone's weather app, but instead of one city it shows storms, closed airspace and broken equipment for a whole region. And it refreshes on its own, so nobody has to carry a disk to a computer.

A floppy disk is a thin plastic square that stores computer files on a magnetic surface. IBM developed the first one in 1971. The FAA systems in question date back to the 1980s.

Floppies hung around in government because replacing them is hard. Air traffic tools run all day, every day, and cannot be unplugged for a weekend swap. Any new system also has to resist hacking, because a single breach in critical infrastructure could hurt a great many people.

The FAA has also long had Windows 95 computers in some places. In June 2025, the acting FAA administrator, Chris Rocheleau, told a House committee: "The whole idea is to replace the system. No more floppy disks or paper strips."

Why it matters: the disks were never the whole problem, but they became the best-known symbol of how old the equipment was.

E-IDS did not appear this week. The FAA awarded the contract to Leidos in August 2020. Leidos is a technology and defense contractor based in Reston, Virginia.

The deal was worth about $292 million. It covered a four-year base period plus 11 one-year options. The work was to be done in Gaithersburg, Maryland, Eagan, Minnesota and Chesapeake, Virginia.

The contract describes the system as "scalable" and "cloud-ready." That means it can grow as needed and can run on remote computers the FAA rents instead of on one machine in a back room. It was meant to replace five older systems as part of NextGen, the FAA's long-running modernization program.

So the news here is the rollout, not the idea. Years of buying, safety checks and testing came before the first site changed over.

• August 2020: the FAA picks Leidos to build E-IDS.
• 2024: the older floppy-based setup is still in use across the country.
• March 2025: Duffy points to floppy disks as proof of an outdated system.
• November 2026: the rollout begins at five sites.
• End of 2028: the target for all 435 facilities.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO), which audits federal agencies for Congress, looked at this in a September 2024 report. It found that 90 percent of the nation's critical air traffic control infrastructure was due or past due for a technology refresh.

The same report surveyed 138 systems. Nearly half were considered "unsustainable" or "potentially unsustainable." The causes included too little money, a shortage of people who know how to maintain them and even missing spare parts.

That is why floppy disks make such a handy headline. They are easy to picture. The wider problem is a pile of aging machines that all need care at once.

Duffy has talked about floppy disks for more than a year. In March 2025, after several plane crashes, he pointed to the FAA's aging technology as a core problem.

In May 2025 he told a panel: "Our system is 25-30 years old. We use copper wires. Floppy disks. It's atrocious, the system we use. It's safe, but we're seeing the cracks of age."

He has also called the modernization effort "the most important infrastructure project that we've had in this country for decades." The department originally aimed to finish the larger project within four years. Industry experts have said that timeline is unrealistic.

The money is a separate fight. Duffy received a $12.5 billion "down payment" in 2025 and has asked Congress for another $30 billion for the full plan.

Not even close. The floppy has outlived its heyday in some surprising places.

• US Air Force: it only ended its use of 8-inch diskettes tied to nuclear missile launch silos in 2019.
• Japan: its government announced in 2024 that it had phased out all but one of its systems that relied on floppy disks.
• Airlines: in 2024, a floppy disk seller said airlines were among his biggest customers.

The big picture: governments keep old technology until the cost of the risk finally beats the cost of change. A modern display is a small step in a very large job.

A new information screen helps controllers see more. It does not fix every strain on the system, and nobody at the FAA claims that it does.

The air traffic system has faced ground stops, close calls on runways and a major software failure in 2023 with NOTAM. A NOTAM, short for Notice to Air Missions, is the alert pilots get about hazards and closures. When that system failed, flights across the country were delayed.

There is also a shortage of certified controllers, and the department has been recruiting new ones, including from the gaming community. A dashboard cannot fill those chairs.

The catch: E-IDS is a large step for information display, but the full modernization still depends on money, people and time. The 2028 date covers the display system, not every old machine in the FAA.

• Your flight: you will not notice the change at the gate, but controllers should get cleaner, quicker information.
• Delays: better weather and outage data may help, but staffing and other issues still matter.
• The timeline: your nearest facility may be upgraded any time between now and the end of 2028.
• The money: the larger upgrade is still waiting on a $30 billion request to Congress.