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You’ve got to hand it to floppy disks. The now 55-year-old storage tech occasionally crops up in the most surprising of places, like a San Francisco light rail line or, previously, US nuclear launch facilities.
One last holdout appears to be the Federal Aviation Administration, which still uses the disks for data storage within the US air traffic control system (via Ars Technica). Not for much longer, it seems, as US transportation secretary Sean P. Duffy has announced the widespread rollout of their long-overdue replacement.
“Good news America: floppy disks are out, 21st century tech is in,” says Duffy in an FAA press release. “The greatest nation in the world deserves a state-of-the-art air traffic control system, and under President Trump, we’re delivering just that.”
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The ageing disks contain “vital weather and other critical information” used within the current air traffic control system, but that’s set to change with the new Enterprise Information Display System (E-IDS).
“E-IDS gives air traffic controllers the information they need to make timely decisions and keep the flying public safe,” says FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford.
“We’re moving away from outdated, manual processes and replacing technology that once relied on floppy disks with a modern system that allows controllers to instantly share critical flight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 across the National Airspace System.”
E-IDS aims to improve the collection of pilot reports (referred to as PIREPS) and Notices to Airmen (NOTAMs), with the former representing first-hand reports on weather conditions from pilots to air traffic controllers, and vice versa.
One of the systems being replaced is called the Information Display System 4 (IDS-4), which appears to rely on floppy drive-equipped machines running MS-DOS. The FAA plans to complete the upgrade to the new system at 435 sites by the end of 2028, with Atlantic City International Airport and Nashville International Airport being some of the first locations to receive the new system.
Here’s hoping the upgrade process goes smoothly, not least because I travel through US airspace on the regular. For giggles, I used this calculator to work out how many 3.5-inch, 1.44 MB floppy disks would be needed to contain the 30 GB base client of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024.
It’s 20,834. With fun facts like that up my sleeve, don’t you wish you were sitting next to me on your next flight?
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