The Boeing Company (NYSE: BA) has still been using 3.5-inch floppy disks to install critical software updates into the navigation databases of its 747-400 aircrafts, according to The Register.
News broke after security firm Pen Test Partners had a chance to look around a 747, following British Airways retiring its entire airline fleet of 747s due to the global coronavirus pandemic.
First introduced in 1988, Boeing's 747-400 aircraft are updated every 28 days via a series of anywhere from one to eight floppy disk drives that an engineer has to hand-deliver to each aircraft.
At the time these aircrafts were first introduced, floppy disks with 1.44 MB of storage space would've been considered cutting edge. Now, after all these years, apparently the airplane and telecommunications giant has still been using that same technology to load avionics software onto its aircraft, despite some airlines moving away from the rather antiquated technology at this point.
That said, many aeronautics companies still rely on floppy disks for software updates. Aviation Today notes that a "significant number of airlines are still using floppy disks for software parts loading."
Despite using floppy disks to install critical software updates, hardware which some may view as untrustworthy due to its age, the technology has apparently been quite reliable when it comes to passenger safety.
In fact, Boeing 747-400 aircrafts have only ever been involved in two passenger deaths over the course of 8.42 million flights. It was Boeing's 737 MAX, a newer model first in flight 2016, that experienced multiple glitches resulting in the total death of 346 passengers.
In the older 747s, floppy disks are generally used to maintain and manage "commercial and industrial legacy systems," which would be difficult and expensive to completely overhaul, potentially causing more harm than good if undertaken.
Boeing isn't the only company or institution still using the outdated hardware of floppy disk drives. The International Space Station (ISS) uses many floppy disks, and the United States Department of Defense only recently stopped using 8-inch floppy disks to coordinate the nation's nuclear weapons system.