The Flight Data Processing (FDP) system, located in the Area Control Center or Tower, is a Computerized Advanced Automatic Air Traffic Control System, based on the use of state-of-the-art computer network technology.

The FDP system consists of a Local Area Network (LAN) with several operating workstations connected to the network.

The system allows air traffic controllers to store and update information for each flight, perform automatic calculations, route flight information and print specified flight strips at a designated workstation.

Flight strips are printed automatically at specified intervals (determined by the supervisor) to give the controllers up to date information on the flights in progress. In addition, the system performs the following functions:  

• Produces reports for all active flights;
• Prints flight strips for a selected flight on request;
• Sends an ATC messages to adjacent ACCs;
• Searches and displays flight plan and supplementary flight information;
• Stores an unlimited number of flights within the system;
• Archiving of flight data; route data and transmitted messages to a magnetic media

Workstations have access to common flight data stored on a high speed duplicated disk located on the main File server. Disk mirroring duplicates an entire physical volume on a second hard disk. If the original disk fails, the duplicate (mirror) takes over automatically, without any loss of important data. In addition, An optional hot standby is available in case the main server goes down completely.

In addition to the dual mirrored hard disk approach used on the main File server, a duplicated standby server, connected to the main File server by a high speed link, is ready to be put into service automatically, should the main server be taken out of service. Sophisticated security features are in place to prevent unauthorized user access.

With the FDP software, the controllers are able to view, modify, activate and cancel flights that have been assigned to their control, and to print flight progress strips displaying this information.