The U.S. Department of Transportation said Thursday that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy visited Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) to mark the installation of electronic flight strips in the air traffic control tower. The new system replaces the paper-based system historically used to track aircraft movements and flight information and is part of the Terminal Flight Data Manager program.
Electronic flight strips provide digital updates to flight data and allow information to be shared among tower positions during daily operations. The system is intended to support coordination as controllers manage traffic levels, weather changes and other factors that affect surface movement and sequencing. Controllers have relied on paper strips for decades to record and pass along operational details.
Electronic flight strips have been in testing and development for decades, but routine, widespread operational use in U.S. air traffic control towers began mostly in the early 2020s under the FAA’s Terminal Flight Data Manager modernization program. Deployment has so far expanded gradually, and DCA is among the latest facilities to implement the system.
The announcement comes the same week that the National Transportation Safety Board published its final report on the January 2025 midair collision near DCA, which examined factors including controller workload, communications, traffic management and information-sharing in the terminal environment. The report issued recommendations to the FAA and the Department of Transportation related to safety processes, coordination and data use in air traffic operations.
