Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced on Thursday that the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) has started phasing out the floppy-disk-era systems that air traffic controllers have used for decades.
“Good news, America: floppy disks are out; 21st-century tech is in,” Duffy said in a statement.
The replacement is the Enterprise Information Display System (E-IDS), a single digital board that shows controllers the weather, pilot reports, air traffic conditions, and equipment outages, information previously scattered across four separate systems built in the 1980s.
Five places have the system so far: Atlantic City International Airport, Nashville International Airport, Greater Rochester International Airport, and data processing hubs in Atlanta and Salt Lake City. By the end of 2028, the FAA wants the E-IDS in 435 towers and facilities.
“We’re moving away from outdated, manual processes,” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said in a statement.
The new boards are a fraction of a larger digital overhaul, however. The FAA is also putting in new radar, radios, and telecommunications infrastructure. The agency estimates that the first round of systems work will cost around $10.6 billion, for which Congress provided $9 billion as part of a broader $12.5 billion modernization package that also funds facilities.
But watchdog agencies in Washington warn the massive effort is already showing familiar signs of mismanagement. Government auditors found that the FAA hasn’t added up what the project will cost in the long run and that its plans are split into thousands of schedules that don’t fit together. The agency’s last big upgrade, NextGen, cost more than $14 billion and ran years behind schedule.
Still, the FAA has little time to spare. The vulnerability of its aging infrastructure was laid bare in September, when a regional facility lost both its main and backup data lines at once, and hundreds of flights were thrown off.
Sources: FAA, Department of Transportation, Government Accountability Office, MLQ.ai