1991年9月17日下午4:40 PM EDT，位于曼哈顿33托马斯街的AT&T建筑20楼电力室发生整流器故障，造成纽约地区所有FAA空中交通管制设施断电1。这次中断影响了肯尼迪、拉瓜迪亚和纽瓦克三大机场的雷达和通信系统，最终导致1174个航班被取消或延误，影响85000名乘客1。
整流器故障始于上午10:10 AM，由电压尖峰和过载保护继电器误调触发1。在随后长达6小时20分钟的电池备电期间，多层告警系统相继失效——指示灯烧坏未被检查，14楼缺失的跳线自6月以来无人发现，警铃被机械静音，且无人在交接班时值守电力室1。由于缺乏远程监测系统，故障一直未被及时发现1。空中交通管制的中断从下午5:00持续至晚上9:00，约4小时，直到下午6:00才手动重启整流器1。此外，故障还阻断了超过500万条国际和美国国内通话1。
AT&T在事故后的声明中先是将责任归咎于现场人员"未能正确读取警报"，随后于9月20日撤销了这一指责，改为指责主管未遵循程序1。作为补救措施，AT&T承诺更换整流器为具有自动重启功能的型号、实现50%负载分散、安装远程监测系统至乔治亚州Conyers中心，并在12个月内投入2亿美元升级全国电力系统可靠性1。事件后，FCC要求运营商在90分钟内报告影响50000以上客户30分钟及以上的中断事件1。
A faulty rectifier in an AT&T power facility brought air traffic control across New York City to a standstill on September 17, 1991.1 The equipment failure occurred in the twentieth-floor power room of 33 Thomas Street in lower Manhattan, triggering a cascade of breakdowns that left radar and communications systems offline at all three major area airports—Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Newark.1 The outage resulted in 1,174 flight cancellations or delays that disrupted over 85,000 passengers.1
The rectifier malfunctioned at 10:10 AM due to a voltage spike and misadjusted protective relays, but the critical nature of the failure went undetected for six hours and twenty minutes as the facility relied solely on battery backup power.1 A compounding series of operational failures prevented timely discovery: monitoring lights had burned out without replacement, a required 25-inch jumper cable had been missing from the fourteenth floor since June, an alarm bell had been mechanically silenced, and no staff member occupied the power room during shift changes to conduct routine inspections.1 Without remote monitoring systems capable of alerting regional operations centers, the malfunction remained hidden until battery reserves depleted around 4:40 PM in the afternoon.1 Air traffic control remained disrupted from approximately 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM—about four hours—until technicians manually restarted the rectifier at 6:00 PM, requiring the physical disconnection of all connected equipment to complete the restart.1
AT&T initially attributed responsibility to on-site personnel for "failing to read alarms correctly" on September 18, but withdrew this accusation on September 20, instead faulting supervisors for not following established procedures.1 The company subsequently committed to replacing the rectifier with a model featuring automatic restart capability, distributing 50 percent of electrical load across redundant systems, installing remote monitoring with direct connection to its Conyers, Georgia operations center, and investing $200 million over twelve months to enhance power system reliability nationwide.1 Regulators responded by mandating that carriers report any service disruption affecting more than 50,000 customers for thirty minutes or longer within ninety minutes.1
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