交通部长肖恩·达菲周六将前一天的全国性停飞归咎于一处“偏远”联邦航空管理局（FAA）设施的铜线更换工作。他说，安装新的光纤线路导致了关键通信中断。
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Saturday blamed the previous day’s nationwide ground stop on the replacement of copper wires at a “remote” Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) facility. Installing new fiber optic lines led to critical communication breakdowns, he said.
据 FlightAware 数据，周五约有 7500 个航班延误，超过 9000 个航班取消。在东部时间下午 4 点后不久停飞开始后，约有 150 万名乘客原定从美国机场起飞。
About 7,500 flights were delayed and over 9,000 were canceled on Friday, according to FlightAware. Some 1.5 million passengers were scheduled to take off from airports in the U.S. after 4 p.m.
这一事件引发了关于可能导致这一历史性事件——自 9/11 以来仅有的第二次全国性停飞——的原因，以及当局采取了哪些措施防止其再次发生的质疑。
Eastern, shortly after the ground stop began.
达菲周六表示：“我们正在努力确定是人为失误，还是他们安装了有故障的路由器。”周六又有近 6000 个航班被取消。
The incident raised questions about what might have led to the historic event—only the second nationwide ground stop since 9/11—and what authorities were doing to prevent it from happening again. “What we’re working to determine is whether we had incompetence or did they install a faulty router,” Duffy said Saturday, which saw nearly 6,000 additional flights canceled.
随着调查人员继续努力查明问题根源，联邦航空管理局局长布莱恩·贝德福德在华盛顿特区告诉记者，预计到周日结束时，受阻的航班时刻表将恢复正常，并承诺“最坏的情况已经过去。”虽然就此次具体故障而言这可能属实，但达菲周五警告说，发生的事情并非孤立事件，并表示，在联邦航空管理局空中交通管制网络陈旧的通信设备得到更新之前，故障很可能会继续发生。
As investigators continued working to pinpoint the source of the problem, FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford told reporters in Washington, D.C., that disrupted flight schedules were expected to return to normal by the end of Sunday and promised that the “worst is behind us.”While that may be true for this specific outage, Duffy warned Friday that what happened was not an isolated incident and said that outages would likely continue to occur until antiquated communications equipment across the FAA’s air traffic control network was brought up to date.
达菲说：“是旧的老旧设备出了故障。听着，它还会继续出故障。”这位交通部长进而呼吁国会在年底前提供 500 亿美元，用于升级空中交通管制和机场基础设施，将政府最近 301 亿美元的请求（其中包括专门用于空中交通管制现代化的 101 亿美元）大幅提高。
“It was the old legacy equipment. It failed,” Duffy said. “And listen, it’s going to continue to fail.”
然而，有理由相信，仅靠财政支持无法解决联邦航空管理局目前面临的问题。这些问题包括完全认证的空中交通管制员短缺，规划和协调必要的现代化工作存在不足，以及面临网络安全威胁的脆弱性。《时代》杂志已联系达菲办公室寻求评论。
The Transportation Secretary went on to call for Congress to provide $50 billion before the end of the year to upgrade air traffic control and airport infrastructure, increasing the administration’s recent $30.1 billion request, which included $10.1 billion specifically for air traffic control modernization. There is reason to believe, however, that financial support alone will not solve the problems currently faced by the FAA. Those include shortages in fully certified air traffic controllers, weaknesses in planning and coordinating necessary modernization work, and vulnerabilities to cybersecurity threats.
杰克逊维尔的航空律师兼飞行员爱德华·布斯表示，现代化联邦航空管理局的空中交通管制系统多年来一直是业界的目标，数十亿美元已经投入到这一过程中。
TIME has reached out to Duffy’s office for comment.
布斯对《时代》杂志说，针对该系统的升级有一个非常有条理的四部分、四阶段计划，他指的是NextGen，这是一项始于2003年的数十亿美元联邦航空管理局现代化计划。该计划包括向基于卫星的飞机追踪、数字通信和更高效的飞行航线转变。布斯表示，早期现代化工作的一个重点是更高效地利用空域。
Modernizing the FAA’s air traffic control system has been a goal of the industry for years, says Edward Booth, an aviation attorney and pilot based in Jacksonville, and billions of dollars have already been sunk into the process. “There has been a very methodical four-part, four-stage plan to upgrade that,” Booth tells TIME, referencing NextGen, a multibillion-dollar FAA modernization initiative dating to 2003. It has included shifting toward satellite-based aircraft tracking, digital communications, and more efficient flight routes.
“他们试图在有限的空间里容纳更多飞机，更好地利用系统中有限的跑道，并且他们从彻底改变全球飞机追踪方式开始。现在这是世界标准了，”他指出，NextGen已经在航空旅行方面取得了进展。
Booth says a major focus of those earlier modernization efforts was making more efficient use of airspace.
该机构较新的改革建立在早期现代化工作的基础上，包括更换老化的通信设备、雷达和其他基础设施，其第一阶段预计将于2028年底前完成。
“They have tried to squeeze more airplanes into limited space, make better use of the limited runways available in the system, and they started with completely changing the way airplanes are tracked in the world. It's a world standard now,” he says, pointing to how NextGen has already made strides in air travel.
“这是一个非常高度技术性、强大的系统，”布斯谈到国家空域系统（NAS）时说，“但似乎昨天下午才发现了薄弱环节。”对空中交通管制的现代化已经做了什么，还有什么需要做？
The agency’s newer overhaul builds on earlier modernization work and includes replacing aging communications equipment, radar, and other infrastructure, with its first phase targeted for completion by the end of 2028. “It's a very highly technical, robust system,” Booth says of the National Airspace System (NAS), “but it seems the weak spot was discovered yesterday afternoon.”
超过二十年来，联邦航空管理局一直致力于现代化国家航空系统，同时与老化基础设施作艰苦斗争。美国众议院交通与基础设施委员会主席萨姆·格雷夫斯在2025年5月的一篇评论文章中写道，美国平均每座空中交通管制塔楼已有40年历史，大多数雷达系统也接近这个年龄。
What’s been done to modernize air traffic control—and what remains? For more than two decades, the FAA has been working to modernize the NAS while fighting an uphill battle against aging infrastructure.
国会此前已下令对联邦航空管理局的老化技术进行独立审查：2024年联邦航空管理局再授权法案要求审计2000年前部署的旧系统——包括其对单点故障的脆弱性——并制定加速更换或改进被发现存在风险的系统的计划。联邦航空管理局在给国会的书面回复中表示，非营利研究机构米特尔已于2025年8月完成审计。回复称，调查结果将指导现代化工作，但未披露具体调查结果或相关行动。
The average U.S. air traffic control tower was 40 years old, and most radar systems were approaching that age, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Sam Graves wrote in a May 2025 op-ed. Congress had already ordered an independent review of the FAA’s aging technology: The FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 required an audit of legacy systems deployed before 2000—including their vulnerability to single-point failures—and a plan to accelerate replacement or improvement of those found to pose risks. In a written response to Congress, the FAA said that nonprofit research organization MITRE completed the audit in August 2025.
2025年7月，国会批准125亿美元，供联邦航空管理局在2028年12月前，对超过4600个站点的“雷达、软件、硬件和电信”设备进行升级。
The response said the findings would guide modernization efforts, but did not disclose the specific findings or resulting actions.
截至11月5日，联邦航空管理局表示，已“更换69%的铜线，在143座塔楼安装地面感知计划系统，将26座塔楼过渡到电子飞行条，并安装226台IP语音交换机”。这些更新出现在一份公告中，公告称联邦航空管理局开始逐步淘汰空中交通管制中使用的软盘。该机构表示，已推出一套替代系统，将包括一块显示中断情况、天气状况和通告数据的数字显示屏。公告确定了五个初始设施，并设定在2028年底前在435个站点安装该系统的目标。
In July 2025, Congress approved $12.5 billion for the FAA to upgrade its “radar, software, hardware, and telecommunications” at more than 4,600 sites through December 2028. As of Nov. 5, the FAA said it has “replaced 69% of copper wires, installed Surface Awareness Initiative (SAI) systems at 143 towers, transitioned 26 towers to electronic flight strips [and] installed 226 IP Voice Switches.”The updates were noted within an announcement saying the FAA was beginning to phase out the floppy disks used in air traffic control. It said that it had launched a replacement system that would include a digital display board with data about disruptions, weather conditions, and advisories.
达菲称这些努力是“美国全新空中交通管制系统正以闪电般的速度到来的最新信号”。联邦航空管理局随后于11月10日宣布，将其人工智能驱动的调度和飞行规划工具——即SMART（战略空域、航线和轨迹管理）——扩展到全国22个航空路线交通管制中心管理的空域。SMART是一项为期12年、金额为8.75亿美元的合同的一部分，该合同还涵盖该机构的流量管理数据与服务计划。达菲在周五的新闻发布会上表示，SMART与此次中断无关。一次设备故障为何会导致广泛中断？
The announcement identified five initial facilities and set a goal of installing the system at 435 sites by the end of 2028. Duffy called these efforts “the latest signal that America’s brand new air traffic control system is coming at lightning speed.”The FAA then announced Nov. 10 that it was expanding its AI-powered scheduling and flight-planning tool—known as SMART (Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes, and Trajectories)—to airspace managed by all 22 Air Route Traffic Control Centers nationwide. SMART is part of a 12-year, $875 million contract that also covers the agency’s Flow Management Data and Services program. Duffy said at Friday’s press conference that SMART had nothing to do with the disruption.
描述周五的故障时，达菲表示，一台正在更换的路由器在工作人员将铜线更换为光纤连接时，开始每四到五秒向其他路由器发送超过1000次连接尝试，从而干扰了通信和部分雷达信号。他说，官员们在偏远地点隔离了该工作后，系统重新上线。
Why can one equipment failure cause widespread disruption? Describing Friday's outage, Duffy said a router being replaced as workers switched from copper wiring to fiber-optic connections began flooding other routers with more than 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds, disrupting communications and some radar feeds.
对于布斯来说，该中断的蔓延凸显了需要采取防护措施，以便在问题影响更广泛系统之前，将其限制在联邦航空管理局通信网络的某一部分。“他们需要一个不易出现单点故障的系统，”他说。
Systems came back online after officials isolated the work at the remote location, he said. For Booth, the spread of that disruption underscores the need for safeguards that can contain a problem in one part of the FAA’s communications network before it affects the wider system.
布斯指出，旧系统——通常依赖模拟线路、数十年的路由器以及相互连接的区域枢纽——缺乏防止局部或例行维护故障在全国范围内级联所需的容错设计。
“They need a system that is not prone to single-point failures,” he says.
“公众可能会震惊地发现，飞行员与空中交通管制员的通信方式相当于一条老式电话线，”他说。“有时有10架，甚至15架飞机竞相与一个管制员指定的频率通信。”阿克安全公司首席执行官库马尔·索卡表示，升级复杂系统时的一个关键考量是，各个组件是否可以在不影响整个网络的情况下发生故障。
Booth pointed out that legacy systems—often relying on analog lines, decades-old routers, and interconnected regional hubs—lack the fault-tolerant design needed to prevent a local or routine maintenance glitch from cascading nationwide. “The public probably would be shocked to learn that the way pilots communicate with air traffic control is tantamount to an old-fashioned telephone line,” he says. “You've got 10, sometimes 15 airplanes competing to talk to a single controller-specified frequency.”
“你能消除单点故障吗？这些系统的分布方式是否使其在某些结构中形成孤岛，这样如果某处出故障，就不会导致整个系统都瘫痪，对吧？”索卡问道。
Kumar Sokka, the CEO of Acre Security, says a key consideration when upgrading complex systems is whether individual components can fail without disrupting the entire network.
他说，许多行业都面临着在升级旧系统的高额前期支出与未来停机可能带来的严重财务和运营风险之间取得平衡的问题。他说，公司可以分批次对系统的不同部分进行改造。
“Can you remove a single point of failure? Are these systems distributed in a way where it's siloed in certain structures where if something fails, not everything fails, right?” asks Sokka. He says that many industries come up against issues of balancing the high upfront expense of upgrading legacy systems against the severe financial and operational risks of future outages.
“你可以分阶段进行，不一定要一次性全部完成，”索卡说。“你可以先对软件和数据进行现代化改造，从而持续监控系统健康状况，开展预防性工作。然后随着时间的推移，你可以更换硬件，因为那是最昂贵的部分。”将新技术与旧设备整合面临自身挑战。周五的简报会上，国土安全部长马克韦恩·穆林表示，新设备压垮了旧系统，尽管具体原因仍在调查中。“零零碎碎地凑合在一起是行不通的。这就是那样做的结果，”他说。
Companies can overhaul different parts of their systems at different times, he says. “You can do it over time and not necessarily everything at once,” Sokka says. “You can get your software and the data modernized first so you can do preventative work of monitoring the health of a system constantly. And then over time, you can change out the hardware, because that’s the most expensive part.”Integrating new technology with older equipment presents its own challenges. At Friday’s briefing, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said new equipment had overwhelmed the older system, although the precise cause remained under investigation.
达菲表示，联邦航空管理局正努力让旅行生态系统在感恩节前恢复正常，感恩节是美国一年中最繁忙的旅行时期之一。据美国航空公司协会称，预计11月20日至11月30日期间，将有近2900万乘客乘坐飞机出行。
“Nickel and diming it together does not work. This is what happens when that takes place,” he said. Duffy said that the FAA is working to get the travel ecosystem back on track in time for Thanksgiving, which is one of the busiest travel periods of the year in the U.S. According to Airlines for America, nearly 29 million passengers are expected to travel by plane between Nov. 20 and Nov. 30.