Air traffic control run by Compaq computers is safe but inefficient, FAA head says

Exclusive U.S. Air traffic control run by Compaq computers is safe but inefficient, FAA head says By Kris Van Cleave Kris Van Cleave Kris Van Cleave Emmy Award-winning journalist Kris Van Cleave is the senior transportation correspondent for CBS News based in Phoenix, Arizona, where he also serves as a national correspondent reporting for all CBS News broadcasts and platforms. Read Full Bio Kris Van Cleave May 29, 2026 / 7:01 AM EDT / CBS News Add CBS News on Google As the summer travel season starts to take off, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration tells CBS News he has confidence in the system, despite hundreds of FAA facilities being run on decades-old technology. "Go back to last summer. We saw, you know, we saw equipment failures in Washington, Newark, Philadelphia, places where the system was just breaking. Most of that has been corrected, not all of it," FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said in an exclusive interview with CBS News this week. "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."  He added, "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."The Transportation Security Administration says its officers screened more than 18.4 million people in the weeklong Memorial Day travel period, and the nation's airlines expect to fly another 263 million passengers between June 1 and Aug. 31.But the airlines' busy season comes after a stretch of high-profile accidents and close calls, as well as a surge in ticket prices due to soaring fuel costs brought on by the Iran war and the collapse of Spirit Airlines."I think we're set up for a great summer. I feel like we've got the people in place," Bedford said. "The system is every bit as safe today a...