Sometimes watching an old movie can feel like opening a time capsule. Nostalgia for some, younger audiences laugh at the use of brick-sized cellphones, cassette tapes, and floppy disks — technologies that were once cutting-edge. While most of the technology Americans rely on today is circa 2020s, one critical system remains behind the times. If you were to watch the air traffic control operations in the 1990 film Die Hard 2 or even the 1970 classic Airport, you might be surprised to learn how little has actually changed.

In air traffic control towers across the country, controllers still rely on outdated tools, such as floppy disks, corroded copper wiring, and physical paper strips, to manage thousands of flights and millions of passengers each day. Meanwhile, just the use of this outdated system has cost taxpayers more than $100 million a month in obsolescence fees. This is a growing risk to our aviation industry’s safety and reliability.