The Federal Aviation Administration has started replacing decades-old information display systems that still rely on 3.5-inch floppy disks at more than 400 air traffic control facilities across the United States.
The new Enterprise Information Display System, known as E-IDS, is scheduled for installation at 435 sites by the end of 2028. Work has already begun at five locations: Atlantic City International Airport in New Jersey, Nashville International Airport in Tennessee, Greater Rochester International Airport in New York, and data-processing hubs in Atlanta and Salt Lake City.
Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy announced the initial rollout on November 5, 2026. “Good news America: floppy disks are out, 21st century tech is in,” Duffy said. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said the change moves controllers away from outdated manual processes and allows them to share critical flight alerts, restricted-airspace schedules and pilot reports more quickly across the National Airspace System.
The systems being replaced are not the primary radar or aircraft-separation computers. They served as electronic position binders that displayed weather observations, Notices to Airmen, airport status information, approach charts and equipment outages. Controllers used this data for operational decisions and pilot briefings. Updates often required physically inserting floppy disks into machines such as the Information Display System 4, or IDS-4.
IDS-4 dates to the early 1990s and ran on MS-DOS-era or unsupported Microsoft platforms. Vendor Systems Atlanta provided long-term sustainment support for the roughly 2,200 workstations configured as about 120 systems at hundreds of facilities. The other systems being retired are ACE-IDS, NIDS and ERIDS. Their separate interfaces created inefficiencies in searching and displaying information and added maintenance burdens.
The FAA has linked the upgrade to two of its Air Traffic Organization’s top safety priorities: improving Pilot Report capabilities and the timely distribution of Notices to Airmen. Government Accountability Office and Department of Transportation reports have described the legacy displays as relying on obsolete 1980s technology with cumbersome manual update methods.
Aviation systems place a premium on certified reliability. Hardware and software changes require extensive testing and parallel operation because the National Airspace System runs continuously. Spare parts for ageing equipment grew scarce, and physical media provided a degree of isolation from some modern cyber risks. Similar longevity has appeared in other high-stakes environments, including the U.S. Air Force’s use of 8-inch floppies in missile silos until 2019.
The E-IDS project itself is not new. The FAA awarded a contract to Leidos in August 2020 with a potential value of roughly $292 million to $295 million for design and development work under the broader NextGen modernisation effort that began in 2008. The original timeline stretched toward 2034. Officials have accelerated the installation target to the end of 2028. The system is designed to create a single enterprise platform with national information exchange and integration with System Wide Information Management services.
The display upgrade runs alongside the separate phase-out of paper flight strips, which controllers have used for decades to track individual aircraft. That programme began in 2022. By late 2026 about two dozen major airports had converted, with the full effort still aiming for completion around 2028. Facilities have long operated with limited digital connections between them. Congress approved $12.5 billion for air traffic control upgrades the previous year, and the administration has sought additional funding.
A floppy-drive failure would delay weather or Notice to Airmen updates rather than remove aircraft from radar screens. Still, timely operational information remains important for safety margins. Controllers and technical staff must keep the old systems running while the new ones are installed and certified, creating overlapping demands. Oversight reports have flagged the need for better coordination across multiple modernisation projects at the same facilities.
E-IDS addresses one clear layer of ageing technology. Broader challenges, including spare-parts shortages, controller staffing levels and the complexity of upgrading live systems, continue. The agency plans to complete the 435-site deployment by the end of 2028.
