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US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was at Reagan National Airport this week to welcome a major operational transition at the airport’s air traffic control tower. DCA’s tower has officially switched over from paper flight strips to an electronic system as part of the FAA’s Terminal Flight Data Manager (TFDM) program, and is one of just 15 US airports equipped with the new technology.
Using electronic flight strips, DCA’s tower will be able to oversee operations with greater efficiency and safety, rather than relying on its outdated analog system. However, despite the many advantages, digital systems remain more vulnerable to system outages and cyber vulnerabilities that paper flight strips are immune to.
Reagan National Airport Debuts Electronic Flight Strips
For decades, the air traffic control tower at 
Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) has relied on paper flight strips to process the hundreds of thousands of flights traversing Washington DC’s complex airspace every year. This analog system has been a critical tool in allowing air traffic controllers to manage flights, utilizing printed paper strips containing key data on every flight. This has all changed with the introduction of electronic flight strips (EFS) courtesy of a new tool developed by Leidos, which will integrate into the unified TFDM digital ecosystem.
Controllers can now track flights on an integrated surface display to access real-time data and prediction models. This display is also shared with airline and airport operations to coordinate operations and reduce risk. This will ultimately help cut delays at one of the country’s busiest airports, as well as improve airspace safety in a notable hotspot area. According to the FAA, EFS provides controllers with “real-time data updates, streamlines the entire flight-plan process, and enables data sharing,” improving the tower’s ability to better manage the “variety of situations that affect surface traffic control decisions every minute of every day.” The FAA said,
“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.”
More Airports To Benefit
The FAA began introducing TFDM at Reagan National in June 2025 ahead of an expected 18-month implementation process. With EFS going live already, the FAA was able to complete its rollout 45% faster than initially planned. This bodes well for its wider rollout across the national airspace, with the FAA planning on its introduction to more airports in the months ahead.
The significance of its rollout at DCA — which has seen the fatal crash of American Airlines Flight 5342 and countless “near-miss” incidents in recent years — cannot be understated. Along with the safety concerns of operating around Washington DC’s complex airspace, Reagan National is also an extremely congested airport that has experienced some of the worst ATC staffing shortages in the country.
According to the FAA, DCA airport is one of 27 major US airports earmarked for a full-functionality ‘Configuration A’ rollout, which includes EFS, Full Decision Support Tools (DSTs), Traffic Flow Management (TFM) data exchange and integration, and TFMS Traffic Management Unit (TMU) displays. Other airports to receive fully functional TFDM include Atlanta (ATL), Chicago O’Hare (ORD), Denver (DEN), Los Angeles (LAX), New York JFK (JFK), and San Francisco (SFO). There will also be a further 22 airports receiving a more limited TFDM suite, but this will include full EFS capability and integration.
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How Resilient Is The New System?
Although electronic slips offer a wealth of efficiency enhancements, there are concerns over the digital system’s resilience during outages. As we have seen during mass system failures, airlines have often resorted to analog methods, such as manual boarding passes, to continue operations after digital systems go down.
The new TFDM system has been built with redundancies and backups in mind, but it is still relatively new and in use at just 15 US airports. Where the FAA could encounter problems is its interoperability with older legacy systems. Although the agency is making progress in modernizing the National Airspace System under its NextGen program, much of its underlying infrastructure remains decades-old.
