US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the FAA will retire floppy disk-based systems in a "historic" tech upgrade, calling it "good news America" as 21st-century technology replaces outdated infrastructure.
Duffy posted a video featuring a newscaster noting the FAA systems "are essentially running on Windows 95," while crediting both Biden and Trump administrations for advancing the plan. "The greatest nation in the world deserves a state-of-the-art air traffic control system," he stated, emphasizing progress under President Trump.
The FAA awarded Leidos a contract in August 2020 to develop E-IDS as part of the Next Generation Air Transportation System (Next Gen) modernization project, initiated in 2008. E-IDS will replace IDS-4, ACE-IDS, NIDS, and ERIDS, with IDS-4 noted for running on MS-DOS since the early 1990s and utilizing 3.5-inch floppy disk drives.
An April 2026 DOT report highlighted controllers' reliance on floppy-driven systems for critical data like weather and NOTAMs, stating E-IDS will provide a single platform with immediate access to all information for split-second decisions. A September 2026 GAO report further criticized legacy systems as "cumbersome" with inefficient data organization and manual updates across 1980s-era interfaces.
Source: Ars Technica · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing