Floppy disks and paper strips lurk behind US air traffic control
- Reference: 1749473019
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/06/09/floppy_disks_and_paper_strips/
- Source link:
This came during last week's Budget Hearing for the US House Appropriation Committee, in which the current FAA boss, Chris Rocheleau, [1]explained to the committee that a new system would mean "no more floppy disks or paper strips."
Asked by Congressman Mike Quigley how the FAA plans to make up for the "12 percent of aeronautical information specialists" – who update charts, maps and key data – that had either left the FAA or were planning to leave, Rocheleau said "first and foremost we're assessing how we're doing that and what what can we do better – so for instance going from a paperbased process to an electronic based process, that's one of them."
[2]
A few staffers should probably expect their job descriptions to enlarge, it seems. Rocheleau said the FAA would keep hiring for critical safety positions but would also be "leveraging the talent that we do have that is staying and making sure that they can both do the critical safety functions as well as those support functions."
[3]
[4]
Asked by Kentucky representative Hal Rogers whether the FAA planned to "build a new system separate and apart from the present system" where it would simply switch the one system to "on and the other one to off," Rocheleau described the transition as "a little more complicated than that" while committee chair Tom Cole quipped "They'll be doing it while you're in the air, Mr Rogers."
The issue of outdated technology has troubled agencies for years. The recent [5]outage at Newark Liberty International Airport - where a copper cable knocked out multiple systems including radar and comms and disrupted hundreds of flights – has thrown the problems faced by the FAA into sharp focus.
[6]
Rocheleau described a network systems refresh in which various units, including the ATC at Newark Liberty, would switch from the "copper wires" of the "old-fashioned telephone lines" over to fiber optic cables, as well as new modern systems for "radars and facilities," promising "intentional deliberate testing to make sure the redundancy and the resiliency is there to ensure the safety of the traveling public."
But this won't happen any time soon. The FAA boss admitted it would take some time to "replace the system," noting that only last week it issued a request for information for companies to pitch about how they might help the aviation agency make the "transition."
"The plan as we described it earlier is to essentially continue to operate the system as we do today and then switch over to the new technologies."
[7]
"No more floppy discs or paper strips."
The FAA's difficulties aren't new. A [8]report [PDF] released in March described the majority of the systems in use at the agency as either "unsustainable" or "potentially unsustainable". It looked at 138 systems used by air traffic control and found that only 33 had no issues. Of the 105 problematic systems, 40 had been deployed more than 30 years ago, and six were deployed over 60 years ago.
According to the report, "challenges include no longer meeting mission needs, difficulty finding spare parts for the systems, and limited technical staff with expertise in repairing the aging system."
And, of course, the challenge of paying for it all as well as running both old and new systems in parallel during the switch-over.
For context, the FAA is not alone in using archaic technology. Navigation data aboard Boeing 747-436 airliners was [9]updated via 3.5" floppy disks and a [10]vacancy for a Windows 3.11 boffin at Deutsche Bahn appeared on a German job site in 2024. Indeed, it took until the same year for the Japanese government to [11]rid itself of floppy disks .
[12]90-second Newark blackout exposes parlous state of US air traffic control
[13]GPS interference now a major flight safety concern for airline industry
[14]US airspace closures, lack of answers deepen East Coast drone mystery
[15]Airline 'in talks' with Kyndryl after failed network card grounds flights
In 2025, a report by Parliamentary spending watchdog, the Public Accounts Committee, [16]warned of the parlous state of UK government legacy systems, many of which were "an end-of-life product, out of support from the supplier, [and] impossible to update."
There is a strong element of the "if it ain't broke, then don't fix it" mentality in many IT purchasing decisions. However, as the FAA will attest, skipping investment in systems can lead to breakdowns and problems that will likely be expensive to deal with and take years – or even decades – to resolve. ®
Get our [17]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.youtube.com/live/AaoOaz44qZg
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_specialfeatures/thestateofstorage&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aEcFFHoWB8OB92rqe-QX8AAAA4M&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_specialfeatures/thestateofstorage&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aEcFFHoWB8OB92rqe-QX8AAAA4M&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_specialfeatures/thestateofstorage&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aEcFFHoWB8OB92rqe-QX8AAAA4M&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/07/newark_airport_outage/
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_specialfeatures/thestateofstorage&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aEcFFHoWB8OB92rqe-QX8AAAA4M&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_specialfeatures/thestateofstorage&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aEcFFHoWB8OB92rqe-QX8AAAA4M&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-25-108162.pdf
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/10/boeing_747_floppy_drive_updates_walkthrough/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/30/windows_311_trundles_on/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/03/japan_floppy_disk_victory/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/07/newark_airport_outage/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/29/satellite_navigation_jamming_now_a/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/17/mystery_drone_sightings/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/10/kyndryl_aer_lingus/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/26/legacy_systems_uk_ai/
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Obviously
The latest generation of Cloud or on-prem systems is useless if they don't stop firing the experts who run those system and, more importantly, can act when the system goes down.
The next time one of Elon's boosters fails to make it to orbit, you might need those same people to clear the airspace underneath it.
Re: Obviously
But if you move the computers to the cloud they will be much closer to the aircraft they are controlling - simple
You're safer with paper.
Paper strips cannot be hacked from the other side of the planet. They don't require power to be read. Digital is inherently less resilient than most manual, paper and analogue alternatives. Something to consider as the climate degrades and politicians restart the cold war to take back control of their citizens.
Re: You're safer with paper.
I can type much faster than I can handwrite. Bring back that old, reliable (truly, it was amazingly reliable) Teletype® technology to produce those paper strips, for enhanced speed!
Re: You're safer with paper.
AFAIK there are indeed strip printers, but their use has remained the same for literally decades because it just works. The strips get inserted in holders which get put on a sloped board and so show the queue. If a plane gets moved to another controller it's a matter of moving the holder to their queue. Once off queue the strip gets removed and the holder recycled. I don't know what they do with the strips - I never noticed (as a kid I was very often watching in the actual tower of our local airport - yes, that is long ago :) ).
Bonus: strips work without power once printed. And even before if written, but there's a dependency on the quality of the handwriting used so no former GPs :).
Re: You're safer with paper.
" no former GPs "
Given a good proportion of defrocked medicos were given their marching orders for their attachment to prescription psychoactives, I am not sure you would want the spaced-out ex-GPs controlling your airspace.
Those given the boot for interfering or otherwise forming unprofessional liaisons with their patients obviously had difficulties in keeping their mind on the job in one domain; I don't imagine they would be more focussed in a ATC tower, ;)
Re: You're safer with paper.
Sort of. It depends. I've lost a lot of paper stuff while moving, and a lot more is extremely hard to access because I wouldn't know whether it's in my parents' attic or in my attic, and wouldn't know in which box it is, and it's all unsorted. On the other hand, I still have a whole lot of digital documents from when I was a kid, they are actually accessible, and it's all backed up to an encrypted could storage. You could probably hack or disconnect me if you tried hard enough, but if it was something running an airport (instead of old D&D campaigns) it would be air-gapped and offline and have UPS and a gennie.
Arguably, the objection to that would be that I was clearly not storing my paper properly while at the same time being decent at storing my bits and bytes, and it would be absolutely true, but that's the whole point - the thing that gets you isn't digital vs. paper, it's doing the job well vs. doing it poorly.
Re: You're safer with paper.
" wouldn't know in which box it is, and it's all unsorted. "
Reminded me of long ago when digitising hand drawn maps and engineering diagrams, manuscript notes were still in the future. This material was was stored in cardboard record boxes labelled with a geographical location reference.
When PCs became available (actually CP/M-86 in this case) and Ashton-Tate dBASE III an inventory of each record box was entered into dBASE which then could be queried to locate the box(es) relating to particular owner or client, property address, type of work etc.
A glorified library card index system but somewhat more versatile but the key feature was that the original record system remained intact.
Re: You're safer with paper.
And it is a good idea to evict the silverfish from time to time...
Yes, let's get rid of all that old legacy stuff, then, the next time we have a power outage or a computer hack, we've got nothing left to fall back on.
Excellent idea.
"we've got nothing left to fall back on"
Oh yes we have. It's the ground.
Just miss hitting the ground and you are good to go.
This is clearly one of those cases where the effort involved in designing, implementing, and certifying a system dwarfs the cost of manufacturing the components or operating the equipment by a significant factor. You get one shot to get it right and can't really turn it off. But as long as the system is kept to spec and properly maintained, it'll always work.
It seems like there'd be a very lucrative opportunity to start a company that does nothing but manufacture "frozen-in-time" hardware and train people how to service it. A billion dollars (peanuts in any FAA modernization scheme) could pay a thousand people $100K/year for ten years to keep it going. Again, is the US government even going to notice a billion bucks a decade? Definitely not.
Once this outfit is up and running I would very much like to work there!
That raises the question of what it runs on. Anything in use for 25 years would have been designed at a time when floppy disks were seen as a reasonable way to transfer data.
If the issue is maintainability either long term availability of spares needs to be established upfront or it needs to be capable of being re-hosted on new hardware (?and OS) without losing qualification.
That raises the question of what it runs on.
If there were enough industries/applications they would benefit from such "frozen in time technology" you might build an entire manufacturing chain from the silicon wafers to your LSI-11, microvax, Z80, m68000, support ICs, static ram etc. The low volume and undemanding (by contemporary standards) fabrication technology would today be well within the capabilities of many University Engineering departments.
Some components like floppy disc drives and media could be replaced transparently with solid state emulators with very little effort required for recertification (given actual floppies were barely more reliable than wet paper.)
Something like this does seems to happen in industrial control & instrumentation where last century PC technology like Intel PIII&486DX motherboards with ISA bus & slots were still being fabricated and available at a price (until at least a few years ago.)
Complex mission-critical systems are very resistant to change. You will always see old tech in these environments. So it would make sense that you make provisions for the ongoing procurement of parts and maintain expertise in those systems.
While the system is obviously more fragile than it should be, I find it irritating that old but still useful tech is thrown under the bus. Perhaps it's a way to make the age of the system relatable to non-technical sorts.
- Floppy disks have worked for decades. Now, if they lack sufficient inventory of the disks and the drives, that's a different issue.
- Paper strips just work, and bring a physical component to the controller. Maybe someone will come up with a brilliant way to make this work digitally, but human factors are very important here.
- So the argument is that replacing copper with fiber prevents the line from being cut? Fiber can have benefits over copper, but if being cut-proof is one of them, it's been hiding that characteristic well.
Obviously
Move IT to the cloud