US airlines warn of impending 5G flight disruption

[Puccini]

US airlines warn of impending 5G flight disruption

By Jonathan Josephs
Business reporter, BBC News

Published 19 hours ago

 

The 10 biggest US airlines have warned that the impending switch-on of 5G mobile phone services will cause "major disruption" to flights.

 

They said the start of Verizon and AT&T 5G mobile phone services, planned for Wednesday, would cause a "completely avoidable economic calamity".

 

Airlines fear C-band 5G signals will disrupt planes' navigation systems, particularly those used in bad weather.

 

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60036831

[Puccini]

Are any airplanes of the type that are at risk of crashing in the USA because of the deployment of 5G mobile phone service also flying to Thailand? Are any of these planes already falling out of the sky near Suvarnabhumi airport?

[Puccini]

Apparently, all Boeing Model 787-8, 787-9, and 787-10 airplanes are affected.

 

Quote

 

“The FAA determined anomalies on Boeing Model 787-8, 787-9, and 787-10 airplanes due to 5G C-Band interference which may affect multiple airplane systems using radio altimeter data, regardless of the approach type or weather,” the FAA airworthiness notification said.

 

“These anomalies may not be evident until the airplane is at low altitude during approach. Impacted systems include, but are not limited to: autopilot flight director system; autothrottle system; engines; thrust reversers; flight controls; flight instruments; traffic alert and collision avoidance system (TCAS); ground proximity warning system (GPWS); and configuration warnings.”

 

Further, the notification added: “During landing, this interference could prevent proper transition from AIR to GROUND mode, which may have multiple effects. As a result, lack of thrust reverser and speedbrake deployment and increased idle thrust may occur; and brakes may be the only means to slow the airplane. Therefore, the presence of 5G C-Band interference can result in degraded deceleration performance, increased landing distance, and runway excursion.”

 

Source: https://www.aerotime.aero/29970-faa-issues-airworthiness-boeing-seveneightseven

 

[treetops]

Emirates have cancelled most of their American flights from today until further notice.  A380 flights are to continue and IAD (with a B777) as the airport there is not affected.

 

8 hours ago, Puccini said:

Are any airplanes of the type that are at risk of crashing in the USA because of the deployment of 5G mobile phone service also flying to Thailand? Are any of these planes already falling out of the sky near Suvarnabhumi airport?

Yes and no, but it's irrelevant as Thai 5G does not use the C Band frequencies that cause the  issue.

[Puccini]

7 hours ago, treetops said:

...Thai 5G does not use the C Band frequencies that cause the  issue...

I was wondering about the 5G frequency used in Thailand when I read this today:

 

Quote

 

At the end of March 2021, 5G commercial services had been deployed in 24 EU-27 countries. The most used frequency bands are 700 MHz and 3.3 – 3.8 GHz with the latter established as the global workhorse band for 5G.

 

The slightly higher 3.7-4.2 GHz was viewed until recently as more peripheral. Some European countries had offered it directly to industry verticals. Japan had awarded 3.6-4.0 GHz to mobile operators for 5G in 2019 but that was a relatively rare occurrence.

 

Those assumptions were smashed by the staggering prices that US mobile operators paid for the 3.7 – 3.98 GHz band at an auction that concluded in early 2021. In total, operators paid $81 billion for the spectrum, plus $9.7 billion in incentive payments for incumbent satellite operators to vacate the band. It is fair to expect more activity in 3.7-4.2 MHz band.

 

Source: https://5gobservatory.eu/5g-spectrum/#:~:text=Internationally there has been a,(24.25-27.5 GHz).

 

Apparently, a branch of the US government certified a buffer of 200 mHz between the 5G band and the 4.2-4.4 mHz band used by the planes' radio altimeters to be safe but now this turned out to be not true for the altimeters of some Boeing models.

 

[Puccini]

I found this just now:

 

Quote

 

The issue is that despite the margin between 5G and radio altimeter frequencies, the latter can malfunction if there is interference from telecoms. And given how critical they are, this is a risk the FAA and the airlines won’t accept. Modifying radio altimeters for literally thousands of aircraft could take years. And the FAA has been frantically testing existing devices in aircraft.

Fortunately, the FAA found that 45% of the US aircraft fleet should be safe from the 5G rollout. This is because these aircraft use radio altimeter models with good-enough filtering in place, to withstand interference. But this still leaves the majority of the fleet facing potential interference. And we also saw that some aircraft types could need new or amended procedures, under some weather conditions.

 

Source: https://mentourpilot.com/5g-rollout-near-us-airports-finally-paused/

 

If I read these numbers correctly, 65% of the US aircraft fleet have radio altimeters in place that do not have "good-enough filtering in place" and would be unsafe to use US airports if the US mobile providers had not, in the meantime, voluntarily agreed to refrain from deploying 5G near airports.