What did the FAA announce on November 5, 2026?
The Federal Aviation Administration has started replacing the display systems that feed weather, alerts and flight notices to air traffic controllers. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the first installations on Thursday, November 5, 2026. He framed the work as the end of floppy disks in American airspace.
The new platform is the Enterprise – Information Display System, known as E-IDS. The FAA says it replaces four display systems that date from the 1980s. Those systems sit in more than 400 facilities. E-IDS is a digital board that gathers equipment faults, traffic conditions, weather impacts and advisories in one place.
Five sites are first. They are Atlantic City International Airport, Nashville International Airport and Frederick Douglass/Greater Rochester International Airport. Two data processing hubs, in Atlanta and Salt Lake City, are also on the list. The agency plans to install E-IDS at 435 sites by the end of 2028.
Duffy kept the message simple. “Good news America: floppy disks are out, 21st century tech is in,” he said in the release. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford made a narrower claim. E-IDS gives controllers “the information they need to make timely decisions and keep the flying public safe,” he said.
The FAA is presenting E-IDS as part of the Brand New Air Traffic Control System. That program was announced in May 2025. The agency publishes state-by-state progress on a Modern Skies website. The November release links to that tracker but gives no E-IDS schedule.
The release is thin on operational detail. It gives no commissioning dates for the five sites and no reliability test results. It also gives no estimate of delays avoided. Those gaps matter for a program that has already slipped once and changed builders.
Why was air traffic control still using floppy disks?
Information display systems are not the radars that track aircraft. They are the screens controllers consult for weather, Notices to Airmen, pilot reports and equipment outages. One of them is the Information Display System 4, or IDS-4.
The devices sit in air route traffic control centers, terminal radar approach facilities and control towers. Their screens carry approach charts, notices and weather together. Controllers need that mix to sequence arrivals and departures safely, according to GAO.
IDS-4 runs on Microsoft-based desktop PCs. The machines appear to be fitted with a 3.5-inch floppy drive, according to a Department of Transportation file cited by PCMag. Updates were manual and likely involved swapping diskettes, PCMag reported.
Why did the hardware survive so long? The systems were certified, familiar and known to work. Replacing them required procurement, safety validation, testing and site work at hundreds of locations. The Government Accountability Office says the FAA has tried to modernize air traffic control since the 1980s. It has delivered limited results.
The GAO is blunt about the usability problem. “The systems are cumbersome for controllers to search, retrieve, and display information,” its September 2026 report found. Multiple display systems also create duplicate sustainment work.
Other governments had similar holdouts. The US Air Force stopped using 8-inch diskettes tied to nuclear missile launch silos in 2019. Japan said in 2024 that it had retired almost all of its floppy-disk systems. Engadget noted both examples when the FAA announcement landed.
Floppy disks are also a useful prop. The Verge reported that Duffy waves them around during speeches and TV interviews. The deeper problem is a portfolio of aging systems that cannot be replaced quickly without risk.
How many FAA sites still run the old systems?
The FAA's target is 435 installations by the end of 2028. Five have been named, which leaves 430 sites to go. The agency has not published a site-by-site schedule showing when each one will switch.
The deadline itself is new. GAO records that the information display program was previously due to finish on September 30, 2034. Under the Brand New Air Traffic Control System plan, the FAA now aims for September 30, 2028. That is 72 months earlier.
E-IDS is one strand of a much larger first phase. The plan covers 5,170 copper lines to be replaced with fiber. It includes 450 voice switches and 1,581 radio sites. Electronic flight strips are planned at 49 airports, along with 166 Surface Awareness Initiative systems. Congress appropriated $12.5 billion in July 2025. Phase one is meant to be fully complete by December 2028.
The FAA's own November scorecard lists 69% of copper wires replaced. It also counts 143 towers with surface awareness systems and 26 towers on electronic flight strips. Another 226 IP voice switches are installed. GAO recorded a different copper figure in May 2026. It found 2,560 of 5,170 wires replaced, or just under half. The agency has not published the counts between those two dates.
The rest of phase one has been squeezed in the same way. GAO records that voice switch replacement moved from September 2037 to November 2028, which is 106 months earlier. Radio replacement moved 105 months earlier, and telecom work 21 months earlier. Electronic flight strips moved to November 2028 for 49 airports. As of June 2026, the FAA had 30 months left to finish the remaining work.
The scale explains the caution. Controllers handle up to 45,000 flights a day, according to GAO. The FAA also relies on 42,000 radios to talk to pilots. Every cutover has to work while the old system stays live.
The $292 million contract that ended early
E-IDS is not a new idea. Leidos, a defense and technology contractor based in Reston, Virginia, announced the award on August 25, 2020. The company said it had won the FAA prime contract to design and develop the system. The award was worth approximately $292 million. It carried a four-year base period and 11 one-year options.
Leidos described the scope as replacing five legacy systems. The FAA now describes four. The company also said controllers could customize displays and work in “two clicks or less,” according to its 2020 announcement.
The original plan was cloud-ready. Leidos said E-IDS would run on FAA virtualized platforms and shared data services. Work was to be performed in Gaithersburg, Maryland; Eagan, Minnesota; and Chesapeake, Virginia.
The program then ran into trouble. GAO reported in September 2024 that E-IDS was behind schedule and had significantly increased its cost estimate. In May 2025, the FAA terminated the contract with the vendor. Officials said an in-house development approach would give them more flexibility to implement faster.
That change matters for how the rollout should be read. The system being installed at the five sites comes after the FAA took development in-house. The agency is now its own supplier. The 2020 contract value also tells us little about what E-IDS costs today. The FAA has not published a current program cost or a per-site figure.
The timeline is worth holding onto. The first five installations arrived about six years after the original award. That is not unusual for safety-critical government software. It does undercut the language of speed around this month's announcement.
What could still go wrong?
GAO's September 2026 report is the most useful check on the announcement. It found that the FAA has no comprehensive, well-documented lifecycle cost estimate for the modernization effort. Officials provided high-level estimates per program in June 2026. They could not supply the analysis behind those figures. The estimate also excludes government costs, most phase-one operations costs and all of phase two.
The schedule is just as loose. Instead of an integrated master schedule, the FAA has 11,389 individual project schedules. They are not coordinated. As a result, separate teams can plan visits to the same facility months apart. GAO cites St. Louis, where voice switch preparation is scheduled for April 2027. Display preparation there is set for January 2028.
GAO made two recommendations. The FAA should build a reliable lifecycle cost estimate and a detailed integrated master schedule for phase one. The Department of Transportation partially concurred with both. GAO says both are sound and should be fully addressed.
FAA officials have their own worries. They told GAO in January 2026 that voice switches carry the highest risk in phase one. Large towers must run old and new switches side by side for every controller. Officials added that the information display work is also a risk, because of program complexity.
The wider baseline is poor. In September 2024, GAO found that more than 75% of the FAA's 138 air traffic control systems were unsustainable or potentially unsustainable. It also found the agency was not modernizing fast enough. That is the context for a single display replacement.
GAO also warned about the effect of speed itself. Its long record on federal acquisitions shows that schedule pressure can lead to skipped or compressed testing. Defects then go unresolved. That is a direct risk when hundreds of safety-critical sites are converted in about 30 months.
GAO's inventory shows how much else is old. The FAA's 450 voice switches include equipment dating from the 1990s. Most have passed end of life and are no longer manufactured. Obsolescence has already caused parts shortages, and older switches support only analog communication.
Then there is phase two. The FAA estimates it will need about $10.2 billion, not including facilities. It has no start date or completion date.
Who is affected by the E-IDS rollout?
The direct users are air traffic controllers at the 435 facilities in the plan. They will move from several aging displays and manual updates to one screen. The indirect users are passengers and airlines on up to 45,000 flights a day. Their delays and ground stops depend partly on how quickly controllers get information.
The practical gains are modest but real. One system should mean faster searches and fewer workarounds. Controllers should spend less time retrieving notices. E-IDS is also meant to improve how pilot reports and Notices to Airmen are collected and distributed. Airways notes that the program is designed to connect with the FAA's System Wide Information Management platform.
What does not change is larger. Radars, radios and telecoms are separate programs with their own risks. Controller staffing remains a chronic constraint. The Verge reported that Duffy has been lobbying Congress for an additional $30 billion. That would sit on top of the $12.5 billion already appropriated. The same report described a deficit of thousands of certified controllers.
Phase two is meant to tackle a different problem: flight scheduling. GAO says the current system creates bottlenecks because airlines try to depart and land at the same times. The FAA wants a Common Automation Platform to replace En Route Automation Modernization and the Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System. It also plans a new traffic flow management system. Neither exists in the market today, according to the agency.
The 2023 NOTAM outage shows why information systems matter. On January 11, 2023, the FAA halted departures across the country after the Notice to Air Missions system failed. The agency later said contract personnel had unintentionally deleted files. They were correcting synchronization between the live and backup databases. The FAA found no evidence of a cyber attack.
That episode is a reminder that modern hardware alone does not prevent outages. Procedures, training, backups and contractor oversight matter as much. A new display system can reduce manual steps. It also adds software that must be maintained and tested.
What should travelers and controllers watch next?
The first test is whether the remaining 430 sites stay on schedule. The FAA's public deadline is the end of 2028. Phase one overall is due in December 2028. Site preparation for voice switches and displays is already being planned for 2027 and 2028. Clashes will show up early.
The two deadlines sit close together. E-IDS is due on September 30, 2028, while phase one as a whole is due in December 2028. A slip in displays would leave little room to recover before the larger milestone.
The second test is transparency. GAO's two recommendations give the FAA a clear checklist. Watch for a published lifecycle cost estimate and an integrated master schedule. Partial concurrence from the department leaves room for the agency to do less than GAO asked.
The third test is money. Phase two is estimated at about $10.2 billion before facilities, and the FAA has not set a start date. Congress will have to decide whether to fund it. The $30 billion request reported by The Verge would cover far more than displays.
The fourth test is operational. Controllers will notice whether E-IDS cuts the time spent hunting for notices. They will also notice whether the system stays up during weather events and equipment failures. The FAA has not said it will publish those measures. That makes independent evidence harder to find.
One measure would be easy to publish. The FAA could report how long controllers take to retrieve a notice before and after each cutover. It could also report E-IDS outage minutes. Neither figure appears in the November release or in GAO's report.
For now, the floppy disk story is real but narrow. Five sites have started, 430 are waiting, and the harder work of cost control, scheduling and staffing is still ahead.