U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy yesterday visited Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) to highlight the airport’s upgrade from paper to electronic flight strips in its air traffic control tower. This upgrade – which enhances the safety and efficiency of our skies – was made possible by the historic $12.5 billion of air traffic control funding within President Donald J. Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill.
For decades, air traffic controllers relied on paper flight strips to manage flight operations. The upgrade to electronic flight strips modernizes, streamlines, and optimizes the air traffic system, enhancing air travel for the American people at one of our nation’s busiest airports.
DCA is one of 15 airports nationwide to have deployed the upgraded air traffic control technology so far.
Additional Information:
- The electronic flight strips are a part of the Terminal Flight Data Manager -a tower-based Next Generation Air Transportation System program that improves surface management and efficiency.
- The Terminal Flight Data Manager program installs electronic flight strips (EFS) in air traffic control towers that make significant change with substantial benefits.
- EFS provides real-time data updates, streamlines the entire flight-plan process, and enables data sharing with stakeholders for collaborative decision making around surface movement.
- The modernization improves air traffic controller’s ability to manage fluctuations in traffic volume, changing weather, and a variety of situations that affect surface traffic control decisions every minute of every day.