A week before the suspension of takeoffs in the USA, this Friday (13), the FAA (American Civil Aviation Agency) had announced that it will eliminate floppy disks used in air traffic control facilities in the country by 2028.
The use of this type of media, which has not been produced on a large scale since 2011, is just one of the problems with the outdated technological structure of American air traffic control, according to information from Reuters.
The system uses computers that are decades old and receives replacement parts purchased from the e-commerce site eBay. Additionally, many controllers still use paper tokens to track aircraft.
The agency states that the US has the most complex airspace in the world and still faces a shortage of thousands of air traffic controllers.
This Saturday (14), the American Secretary of Transport, Sean Duffy, said that a failure during the replacement of copper cables with fiber optics caused takeoffs to be halted, and that the government is investigating whether there was human error or faulty equipment.
Donald Trump's government denies there are signs of a cyber attack or threats, but has avoided ruling out any hypothesis.
USE OF DISKETTES IN 400 UNITS
About 400 air traffic control units across the United States still use floppy disks. The media are used to store meteorological information and other critical data for controllers.
Last week, on November 5, the FAA announced that it will replace four systems dating back to the 1980s by the end of 2028. The data, which brings together operational information, will be centralized in a single location so that controllers can quickly view updates.
Congress last year approved US$12.5 billion (R$70 billion) to modernize the US air traffic control system, and Duffy wants another US$30 billion for additional improvements as the FAA faces numerous technological problems.
"We are moving away from outdated manual processes and replacing technology that once relied on floppy disks with a modern system that allows controllers to instantly share critical flight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," FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said in a statement.
PROBLEMS WITH FIBER OPTICS
In a previously unreleased Oct. 23 agency memo seen by Reuters, the FAA said "there have been a number of recent air traffic control disruptions due to cuts in fiber optic cables, which can lead to delays, diversions and cancellations" and requested coordination with the FAA on related projects.
The FAA cited an incident that occurred on October 13 in which a fiber optic cable connecting Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport to the FAA network was severed near one of the airport's gates, resulting in the loss of data services between FAA facilities and requiring the halt of ground operations.
In September, thousands of flights across the densely populated Northeast region were delayed or canceled due to simultaneous circuit failures at an air traffic control facility in Philadelphia and the accidental severing of a fiber optic cable in New Jersey by a construction crew.
"When it fails, we simply don't have the redundancy that we would have with a modern architecture," FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said at the time.
Much of the structural fragility of the system has been documented for years.
The GAO (Government Accountability Office) reported in 2024 that the FAA had classified 51 of its 138 air traffic control systems as unsustainable and another 54 as potentially unsustainable. Together, they represented more than three-quarters of the systems analyzed.
PARTS ON EBAY AND PAPER TOKENS
The FAA also uses decades-old Compaq computers and replacement parts purchased on eBay, according to Reuters.
The country's air traffic control facilities are unable to communicate with each other and operate on individual analog computers, according to the news agency.
The FAA has also been working for years to end a long-standing practice in which air traffic controllers use paper tokens to track aircraft. But the adoption of the change, starting in 2022, at 49 major airports will take at least until 2028 to be completed.
At least 27 large airports have already abolished paper tokens.
