FAA head says air traffic system is ‘safe, but it’s not efficient’

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Administrator Bryan Bedford says that while the nation’s air traffic control infrastructure is safe, it is still operating on decades-old technology that needs improvement.

“We still have, I think, some real reliability risk in the system because we’re running off of 1970s and ‘80s computing power, compact disks. It’s crazy what the system is using today. … There’s a lot of floppy disks still in the system,” Bedford said in an interview with CBS News this week. “We have 313 FAA facilities and each of them are essentially running off Compaq computers. … It works, it’s reliable, it’s safe, but it’s not efficient.”

A string of high-profile aviation incidents and equipment failures have rocked the industry and raised questions about the nation’s aging air traffic control network as peak summer travel season gets underway — and ahead of the upcoming FIFA World Cup, which is being hosted in North........

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