"This is your pilot speaking. Just one moment, my traffic controller needs to swap out their floppy disk… there we go." Those are disquieting words you probably don't want to hear, for nobody wants to know their airborne equilibrium is still in the hands of 20th-century technology. Yet apparently, many US air traffic control systems are still using floppy disks, though it's looking to change that.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), as reported by NPR, is looking to ditch the ancient technology of floppy disks and bring its tech practices more in line with the modern age. This plan was put forward at a hearing for the House Appropriations Committee.
FAA administrator Chris Rocheleau explains that the goal is to replace the system completely: "The whole idea is to replace the system—no more floppy disks or paper strips." Yes, that's right: paper strips. This pre-digital method has you use pieces of paper to annotate and record information about flights for other flight controllers to see. Apparently, it's still sometimes used for flight control today, as is Windows 95.
Rocheleau says replacing the old system is "the most important infrastructure project that we've had in this country for decades."
It's not just the FAA itself that's wanting to change things, either. A lot of this comes off the back of a collective support for aviation proposed by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee back in April. Support comes from many different bodies (such as the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, for instance) to modernise the industry.
To be clear, it's not that the entirety of the FAA uses paper and floppy disks to manage flight paths, but NPR reminds us that a 2023 FAA assessment, over a third (37%) of the Air Traffic Control (ATC) systems were "deemed unsustainable", and some of these systems have "critical operational impacts on the safety and efficiency of the national airspace."
We shouldn't think that the FAA is the only industry that's taking a belated step into the 21st century, though. Floppy disks have been blighting tons of other industries and agencies.
It was only last year that Japan declared it had finally won the war on floppy disks, some trains in San Francisco still rely on them, and they were even used by the US Air Force for nuclear weapons systems until a frighteningly recent 2019.
The other side to this coin, I suppose, then, is an homage to floppy disks. Good for you, you persistent little buggers.
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