Christian Davies in New York and Peter Campbell in London
A week before federal regulators issued a dramatic “ground stop” triggering a weekend of travel chaos across the US, the Department of Transportation announced it was phasing out the use of floppy disks in American air traffic control towers.
“Good news, America: floppy disks are out, 21st-century tech is in,” US transportation secretary Sean Duffy proclaimed. “The greatest nation in the world deserves a state of the art air traffic control system, and under President [Donald] Trump, we’re delivering just that.”
Duffy, a former lumberjack and reality TV star, is trying to upgrade the country’s crumbling air traffic control infrastructure with $12.5bn in funding he secured from Congress last year.
