GoKawiil1991 AT&T building battery failure disabled NY-area FAA air traffic systems
On September 17, 1991, a routine Con Edison-requested power transfer led to a rectifier trip at AT&T's 33 Thomas Street facility in Manhattan, which went unnoticed as backup batteries silently kept DC power flowing to FAA telecom lines. Hours later the batteries drained, cutting radar feeds, radios, and flight-handoff links for New York's radar center and the Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Newark towers simultaneously, forcing controllers onto manual backups and resulting in 1,174 flights delayed or canceled.
GoKawiil's interpretation of the reporting above, not reported fact.
The incident shows how a single shared infrastructure point, a telecom company's power room, could become a hidden single point of failure for an entire region's air traffic control, since redundant FAA phone lines all ran through the same building. It illustrates a recurring hazard in engineering safety design: backup systems can mask faults just long enough to delay detection until recovery options are exhausted, a theme the author says connects to prior IEEE safety-standards research.
- A 1991 power failure at one Manhattan building disabled radar, radios, and handoff links for three major NY airports simultaneously.
- Backup batteries masked the initial rectifier failure for over six hours before causing a total outage.
- 1,174 flights were delayed or canceled due to redundant FAA circuits sharing a single physical power source.
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Published there as: “One Manhattan power room took down FAA air traffic control in 1991”
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