FAA Will Retire Floppy Disks From Air Traffic Control by 2028

The Federal Aviation Administration will pull floppy disks out of 435 air traffic control facilities by the end of 2028, retiring four information systems that date back to the 1980s. The agency announced the rollout on November 5, and the replacement — a centralized platform called the Enterprise Information Display System, or E-IDS — promises controllers faster access to weather reports, flight alerts and other operational data.

It's a long-overdue swap. The FAA's administrator, Bryan Bedford, put it plainly in the announcement: "We're moving away from outdated, manual processes and replacing technology that once relied on floppy disks with a modern system that allows controllers to instantly share critical flight alerts, restricted airspace schedules and pilot reports." Bedford added that the agency wants critical information available more quickly across its networks.

What changes at the controller's desk?

Instead of juggling separate information displays and manual processes, controllers will get a single, centralized view of operational updates, equipment problems, weather disruptions and aviation advisories. The first five sites to receive E-IDS are concrete and named: Atlantic City International Airport, Nashville International Airport, Greater Rochester International Airport, and FAA data processing hubs in Atlanta and Salt Lake City. From there, the agency could extend the system to 453 sites by the end of 2028.

The upgrade arrives under real pressure. Congress approved $12.5 billion last year for air traffic control improvements, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is now seeking another $30 billion for additional upgrades. The FAA's problems stretch well past removable storage: the agency still runs decades-old computers and, remarkably, sources replacement parts from eBay. Its facilities also operate as isolated stacks of separate systems — Bedford has said before that "every facility is a silo."

Why now?

Communication failures have exposed how fragile the infrastructure has become. Last month, the FAA sent a memo to airports warning about several recent outages caused by fiber optic cable cuts, which can trigger flight delays, diversions and, in the worst cases, cancellations. One incident played out in mid-October, when a construction-related cable cut outside George Bush Intercontinental Airport disrupted data services between FAA facilities and forced a ground stop. In September, a circuit failure at a Philadelphia air traffic facility and in New Jersey delayed or canceled thousands of flights across the Northeast.

The floppy disk problem is hardly unique to the FAA, either. Mission-critical infrastructure around the world has struggled to abandon obsolete systems:

• In June 2025, the FAA laid out earlier modernization plans that also targeted paper flight strips and computers reportedly running Windows 95.
• The agency has been gradually introducing electronic flight strips since the Biden era, with the transition expected to reach 49 major airports by at least 2028 — only 27 have switched so far.
• San Francisco awarded Hitachi Rail a $212 million contract in 2024 to replace the floppy-disk-based control system running its Muni Metro light rail network.
• The German Navy is looking to replace 8-inch floppy drives aboard its Brandenburg-class frigates, where the disks feed a data acquisition system tied to propulsion and power generation.
• Japan eliminated the last 1,034 government regulations requiring floppy disk submissions in June 2024.

What's the outlook?

For the FAA, the 2028 deadline is ambitious but grounded in funded momentum: $12.5 billion already approved, another $30 billion on the table, and a named administrator staking credibility on killing the silos. Whether E-IDS hits all 453 sites on schedule will hinge on how fast the agency can convert a five-site pilot into a nationwide rollout — and on whether the cables, circuits and decades-old computers underneath it hold out long enough to make the handoff.