FAA Moves Air Traffic Control Off the 3.5-Inch Floppy Disk
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced on November 5, 2026 an effort to replace the 3.5-inch floppy disks used in FAA air traffic control with a new digital system. The Department of Transportation and the FAA each published a release the same day. Duffy also posted on X that 1980s floppy disks were out and that more than 400 FAA facilities would be upgraded by 2028.
The replacement is the Enterprise Information Display System, or E-IDS. It is a modern display and data platform that controllers use to view information such as weather and operational status. According to The Verge, the FAA is rolling E-IDS out to replace four legacy setups, meaning older systems still in service, across more than 400 air traffic control facilities. Upgrades have started at five sites: Atlantic City, Nashville, Rochester, Atlanta and Salt Lake City. The targeted rollout covers 435 facilities by the end of 2028.
The FAA awarded the initial E-IDS contract to Leidos in August 2020, according to the same report.
A Modern Skies Summit presentation from April 2026 describes controllers using a system driven by floppy disks and an antiquated operating system for critical information such as weather. A 2025 DOT air traffic control system plan states that the FAA's OASIS systems in Alaska use floppy disks and compact discs.
Separately, on September 28, 2026, Duffy and airlines urged Congress to quickly approve $30 billion for aviation reforms, as Reuters reported.
The broader context here is the schedule. The contract dates to 2020, the first five sites are only now being upgraded in late 2026, and the full footprint is due by the end of 2028. That is a migration of roughly eight years from award to completion, and the five initial sites represent a small share of the 435 targeted facilities. Most of the work is still ahead.
In my view, the harder question is cutover, the moment a site switches from the old system to the new one, rather than procurement. A display and data system in an air traffic control tower or radar facility cannot simply be switched off overnight. Weather and flight information has to keep flowing to controllers while each site is converted, so the operational test lies in how each facility is migrated, one at a time. The early sites will show whether that process can be repeated at scale.
Removable media has been a long-standing concern for security and reliability teams. Floppy disks and optical discs are slow, fragile and difficult to keep in step with modern operating system support. The E-IDS announcement is the first concrete step toward removing that dependency from the controller's workstation. If the rollout holds to its schedule, controllers would work from a current platform for the weather and operational data they rely on every shift, and the floppy disk would leave the critical path of the system.
